Breaking: NOAA, NASA quietly conceded: 2014 was probably not the warmest year on record

Former Harvard Physicist Dr. Lubos Motl: 'According to NOAA, the probability that a different year than 2014 was the warmest one was 52%.
According to NASA, the probability that a different year than 2014 was the warmest one was 62%.'

It is more likely than not that the warmest year was a different one than 2014.

'As the tweet unambiguously proves, NASA's Gavin Schmidt knew about this fact. That didn't prevent them from pushing virtually all mainstream media to publish the lie – in the very title – that:
NASA: 2014 was the warmest year'

NOAA, NASA: 2014 was probably not the warmest year on our record A direct proof that the professional alarmists are intentionally lying

As I discussed in detail, the surface temperature record significantly disagrees with the satellite datasets when it comes to the question whether 2014 was a warmest or near-warmest year.

Satellites answer this question with a clear “No”: 1998 was 0.3 °C warmer than 2014. This difference (decrease of temperature) is rather safely greater than their error margin which allows you to say that the global mean temperature as defined and calculated via the RSS methodology, for example, almost certainly didn’t peak in 2014. (If it did, it would be no big deal, anyway, but it did not.) The year 2014 was tied on the 6th and 7th place among the 36 according to the RSS AMSU satellite methodology, for example.

On the other hand, NOAA’s NCDC and NASA’s GISS ended up with the mean value of the global mean temperature for 2014 to be about 0.02 °C higher than the second warmest year on their record, with their (different) definition of the global mean temperature, and the second year on their record is 2010 (closely followed by 2005).

Immediately, sensible people – including several climate scientists – were telling them that this difference – 0.02 °C – is so tiny that it is easily beaten by the error margin which prevents you from acquiring any confidence while deciding which year was actually *the* warmest one.

Now, the two questions are: how much do the error margins of the NOAA, NASA temperature records matter? And if they change the answer to the question whether 2014 was the warmest one, did they know about this fact when they loudly announced that “2014 was the warmest year” or did they overlook that detail?

The answer is that the answer is heavily affected by the error margins and NASA, NOAA knew that – but were careful to get the wrong answer to the media. Here is a January 16th, 2015 tweet by Gavin Schmidt of NASA’s GISS, pretty much the most important guy in that agency. He reveals that they provided the media with fraudulent claims while he seems to be arrogant towards a person who just asked (“@DavidRoseUK Were you on the press call? The uncertainties were directly addressed.”):

When the uncertainties are taken into account, you can’t say which year was the warmest one on the two records. Instead, you may only quantify the probability – by integrating the probabilistic distributions in various ways – that one year or another year was the warmest one. And both NASA, NOAA did this exercise for us – in fact, before they spoke to the media! If you were one of the few people in the world who attended a press conference, you could have heard a “footnote”. But no participant did notice that footnote, partially because most journalists are either dishonest or stupid.

The answer is that 2014 had the highest chance, according to their methodology and (possibily manipulated) raw numbers. But in both cases, the chance was lower than 50%. If I simply subtract the first numbers from 100 percent, the tables above imply that
According to NOAA, the probability that a different year than 2014 was the warmest one was 52%.
According to NASA, the probability that a different year than 2014 was the warmest one was 62%.
Using the informal language for the probability ranges, both teams’ work implies that
It is more likely than not that the warmest year was a different one than 2014.
The temperatures were pretty much constant for a decade or two, so the error margins guarantee that all the warmer years in those decades – and there have been several warmer years like that – had comparable chances of having been the #1.

As the tweet unambiguously proves, Gavin Schmidt knew about this fact. That didn’t prevent them from pushing virtually all mainstream media to publish the lie – in the very title – that
NASA: 2014 was the warmest year
Sorry, but even your own work shows that this probably wasn’t the case and you were deliberately lying to the media – and everyone else – about the results of your work. You are doing it all the time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 52 or 53 weeks a year.

The tweet by Gavin Schmidt is a simple example of mass manipulation in action. They publish some of the correct yet inconvenient clarifications at places where almost no one reads – the press conference was attended by a small number of people, Schmidt has a few thousand Twitter followers, almost no one reads the bulk of the IPCC reports etc. – while at the places which matter because millions of people read them, they always post the distortions, oversimplifications, and downright lies.

This combination of strategies allows them to say that they “did release the truth”. However, they are careful that they only speak the truth when almost no one listens.

Update

Hours after this blog post was published, The Daily Mail published a criticism by David Rose with pretty much the same content. It is totally plausible but not certain that he was able to make the same conclusion independently of this TRF blog post.

I think you’re letting the LIARS off to lightly. NASA has long since publicly pointed out that satellite data (which covers very nearly the entire earth) is more accurate than surface thermometers. And it’s worth pointing out that surface temperatures measure at most only 30% of the earth’s surface (actually, much less than that, since most uninhabited regions have no thermometers). Then there is the issue of measurement error. It has to be worse for surface data, since most thermometers are sited wrong,or located in UHIs in which case the raw data has to be radically revised. Then here is the consistency issue related to dropping or adding stations, and/or replacing instruments.

Robert

“NASA has long since publicly pointed out that satellite data (which covers very nearly the entire earth) is more accurate than surface thermometers.”

Quote and cite?

Denis Ables

I’ll look around their quote, but there’s hardly any point. The alarmists will then question the credibility of whoever made the response, if a name is mentioned rather than a major news media quote with unknown name.

And, in any event, you could then just then claim that NASA itself isn’t credible. After all, both NOAA and NASA just began backpedaling from their claim that 2014 is the hottest year.

Robert

You missed referencing Agenda 21….

Denis Ables

I try to stay with the science. Arguing the politics is more like arguing religion. The science is pretty clear. If indeed it’s “settled”, it’s because there seems to be NO evidence showing that co2 has EVER influenced our planet’s temperature. And “EVER” spans a very long time including when co2 was 10 to 20 times higher than now.

The data does not support the hypothesis. There is not even a correlation which would make it at least plausible.

Robert

“I try to stay with the science.”

“… there seems to be NO evidence showing that co2 has EVER influenced our planet’s temperature.”

Alrighty then….

Seems time to quote C.Sagan…

Or D. Moynihan. …

Denis Ables

There’s not even a correlation showing that co2 has ever had any impact on the planet’s temperature. If there were a correlation that would make the AGW claim at least plausible, AFter all, we’re talking about a duration of millions of years, including when co2 was 10 to 20 times higher than now. If during that entire period there was never ANY evidence that co2 impacted the earth’s temperature, whatr is the current claim based on? I’ve pushed some supposedly knowledgeable folks for evidence and the best they can do is start referring to an IPCC document —

Robert

“There’s not even a correlation showing that co2 has ever had any impact on the planet’s temperature.”

I feel like I just got dropped into a Simpsons episode. Sure not a Dr.Wizard one…

Walk us through the errors in AR5.

Denis Ables

There’s certainly some chance that you got dropped somewhere.

How about YOU enlightening the readers with some evidence?, keeping in mind that even a correlation does not imply causation.

Robert

“How about YOU enlightening the readers..”

C.Sagan comes to mind….

Denis Ables

You’re the one operating as if this is a twitter account. Expand a bit for us please. It is the alarmist claims that would imply extremely costly changes to society. THEY must be able to provide some EVIDENCE before society takes such an action. What don’t you understand about that rather typical process?

Will Watson

The cost of doing nothing to address AGW will be nothing less than the end of our civilization.

Robert

“It is the alarmist claims that would imply extremely costly changes to society. ”

Nice to see “imply”; points to you realizing that claim is just a bit of rhetoric

Usually those claiming that ACC is some hoax or an effort by government to control the people or whatever are a bit more adamant. ..

.

Denis Ables

Much more than a bit of rhetoric. A few economists have spoken on this one, and not only is the so-called “solution” unbelievably expensive” and disrupting, the alarmists’ own numbers show almost no impact on the temperature!

Robert

” A few economists have spoken on this one , and not only is the so-called “solution” unbelievably expensive”.

Quote marks usually mean quoted material.

Yet we see no names.

Yet we see no sources.

Denis Ables

Sort of the same situation you have insofar as EVIDENCE !

I’ll go look for names, sources on economic implications. Why don’t you do the same for evidence?

Robert

“..you do the same for evidence?”

C. Sagan.

And logical fallacies…

Empty claims, rhetoric.

sabretruthtiger

Quoting a scientists name with no context is not an argument.

Robert

“..no context..”

You are being disingenuous…

And not in a cute way…

sabretruthtiger

Where to start….we need just one:

Their models don’t match observations.

Robert

“Their models don’t match observations”

Walk us through the errors in AR5.

Or at least cite the blog you use to inform your thinking.

Robert

” I’ve pushed some supposedly knowledgeable folks for evidence and the best they can do is start referring to an IPCC document”

If you can show us your published science that supports your claims …..
I don’t let the auto shop technician run the autoclave…

Conversely, a climate scientist wouldn’t be the first person I’d go to for an analysis of a car crash testing model.

Will Watson

You don’t need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind blows.

Denis Ables

Interesting. NOAA & NASA now admit that here is a higher probability that 2014 is NOT the hottest when all the other years probabilities are added up.

It’s b.s. too, but flies in the face of the liarists trying to DENY that there has been no additional warming for almost two decades.

From a recent quote it looks as if either the IPCC has changed its claim about record warming over the past 800 years to (now saying) 1300 years. It may be the difference between the actual report and summary version prepared for politicians etc.

Denis Ables

Your comments are right in line with Mann’s response to science issues… “would you ask a dentist to take out your gall bladder”

(no content)

Robert

It is a meme…

Denis Ables

(no content)

Robert

If you can show us your published science that supports your claims …..
I don’t let the auto shop technician run the autoclave…

Denis Ables

This is a bit turned around. It is the alarmists (such as you, … aka “liarists” in some less polite circles) that are demanding immense expenditures and changes because they believe humans are and will continue to be a significant cause of warming.

Surely being one of these rabid believers, you can present some evidence? I am merely a skeptic who needs to be convinced, and, at least so far, you have not provided one bit of evidence (apart from that rather ancient experiment which does not take into consideration the open atmosphere nor convection nor the fact that co2 capabilities, insofar as contributing to temperature, diminish as its level increases.

In, fact there doesn’t even seem to be a correlation. (That is, itself “data”, like it or not.)

I wonder why someone hasn’t by now enhanced that old experiment with one which begins with no co2 in the container and reports, in several steps, temperature increase as the co2 level is increased,

Denis Ables

“published papers” ? All I’m asking for is some evidence. Surely you’re not treating this issue as a religion. BELIEF doesn’t cut it in science – it takes evidence.

sabretruthtiger

Wattsupwiththat has many peer reviewed articles that support the skeptics. Please don’t be lazy, do some research. But then if you did, you wouldn’t be an alarmist….unless you’re corrupt and dishonest.

sabretruthtiger

There are many climate scientists who reveal AGW to be false.
Perhaps you should do some research.

You’re also using argumentum ad verecundiam (appeal to authority) It avoids the argument in question.

Robert

“There are many climate scientists who reveal…”

That is an excellent place for names, quotes, and cites.

Yet…..

Nope. Nothing there.

Robert

“There’s not even a correlation showing that co2 has ever had any impact on the planet’s temperature.”

Dam* , and I’d taken off my boots after mucking out the barn…

Will Watson

You’re mad. There are extensive proxy records that show correlation between CO2 and temperatures. You even admit you know this.

Denis Ables

Show me. It’ll really be interesting, inasmuch as co2 and temperature do not show anything over geologic periods but temperature variation happening first, hundreds of years before similar variations in co2 level.

During the last century which isn’t a long enough time span to evidently show the carbon cycle at work, what you get is temperature increase beginning at the bottom of the LIA, (mid 1600s) for two centuries (no co2 increase). Then, co2 began increasing steadily. Cooling period from the 40s to the 70s. Warming from the 70s to about 2000. No additional warming from that point onwards, even as co2 is at its highest level !

There doesn’t appear to be even a correlation, but if you can find one that lasted long enough to qualify, I’d be interested. However, as I stated earlier, correlation does not imply causation. Share your data please.

Will Watson

Vostok ice cores, chump: they go back 650,000 years. The Dome C cores go back further, I think 800TYA.

Every study of correlation/causation refers to the Vostok studies. You had to be freaking idiot to try to argue this topic without knowing that basic fact.

Where else would we look for correlation? Damn, you don’t know this?

Guest

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Denis, the
statistical correlation between CO2 and temperature is very strong
over the last 400,000 years. Some skeptics have claimed that CO2
can’t be the cause of warming, because CO2 often lags 600-1000 years
behind the temperature rise. First of all, recent research looking at
temperatures outside Antarctica has shown that the lag is roughly 200
years, not 600-1000 years. Second, climate scientists (Loren, Hansen,
etc.) predicted that CO2 would lag behind temperature rise back in
1990, because changes in the temperature were initiated by changes in
the orbital cycles which in turn change the amount of sunlight
hitting the Earth. More solar irradiation initiated a positive
feedback loop where more CO2 was emitted (e.g., warming oceans hold
less CO2 and emit more) and more CO2 caused more warming, which
emitted more CO2, and on and on. Study of CO2 and temperatures at the
end of the last ice age show that 90% of the warming followed the
rise of the CO2, but some warming did happen before the rise of CO2.
See: http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature-basic.htm
(also read the intermediate explanation and watch the video at the
bottom of the page). Almost no serious skeptics argue that CO2 isn’t
a greenhouse gas, because we have very precise measurements for the
heat trapping potential of CO2 in laboratories. What skeptics argue
about is whether the warming from CO2 can cause feedbacks
(principally from increasing water vapor) which cause 3 times as much
warming. This is the whole debate over climate sensitivity, but today
20 different lines of evidence now suggest that climate sensitivity
is roughly 3 degrees Celsius.

The final argument of skeptics
is that the sun, not CO2 is causing the current warming. It is
true that past temperatures changes were initiated by changes in
orbital cycles which changed the solar irradiation, but that is not
true for the recent warming over the last 130 years. First of all, we
have very exact measurements of solar irradiation from satellites
since 1978 and the amount has not changed very much, nor have Earth
surface temperatures correlated very well with the 10-12 year solar
cycles. See:http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm
The
impact of the sun is minor, having caused 0.2 watts per m2 of
radiative forcing compared to 1.7 W/m2 for CO2 and 3 W/m2 for all
forcing agents. Over thousands of years, changes in solar irradiation
can cause ice ages and interglacial periods, but it is a very slow
process taking thousands of years until tipping points are reached,
but the recent warming is nothing like the historical warming caused
by orbital cycles.

Denis, if you really want to argue that
97% of climate scientists are wrong about anthropogenic global
warming, you need to download John Cook’s “The Scientific Guide
to Global Warming Skepticism” which presents the multiple lines
of evidence why climate scientists are sure that human activity is
causing the recent warming. All the other theories (changes in solar
irradiance, cosmic rays, volcanic emissions, etc) simply don’t hold
up to scrutiny. The only one which is plausible is water vapor and
cloud formation, but many lines of evidence show that water vapor
levels depend upon greenhouse gas levels, not the reverse. Water
vapor is a short lived greenhouse gase which stays in the atmosphere
for roughly a week, whereas CO2 can stay for thousands of years. In
other words, CO2 is the dependent variable; it is not the *cause*,
but rather the *effect* of increasing other greenhouse gases (CO2,
CH4, N2O, etc).

Denis Ables

The lag between temperature and co2 variation is usually several hundred years, whether it drops as low as 200 I don’t really know (or care.)

Skeptical Science is the postersite for alarmists. Their “rebuttals” are invariably buried in obfuscation. The commentary you pasted from there is arguing in the face of clearly defined correlation across geologic periods showing temp variation before co2 variation. No mater how you twist and turn, that cannot be ignored. But when you start talking about 1990, that is very short-term and the picture won’t likely clear up for several hundred years. ANYTHING that goes up short-term will be correlated with co2 because it’s consistently increasing.

During co2 recent steady rise there has been a cooling from the 40s to the 70s, warming from the 70s to the high 90s, and no additional warming since then, with co2 now at its highest level.

Denis, the statistical correlation between CO2 and temperature is very strong over the last 400,000 years. Some skeptics have claimed that CO2 can’t be the cause of warming, because CO2 often lags 600-1000 years behind the temperature rise. First of all, recent research looking at temperatures outside Antarctica has shown that the lag is roughly 200 years, not 600-1000 years.

Second, climate scientists (Lorius, Hansen, etc.) predicted that CO2 would lag behind temperature rise back in 1990, because changes in the temperature were initiated by changes in the orbital cycles which in turn change the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth. More solar irradiation initiated a positive feedback loop where more CO2 was emitted (e.g., warming oceans hold less CO2 and emit more) and more CO2 caused more warming, which emitted more CO2, and on and on. Study of CO2 and temperatures at the end of the last ice age show that 90% of the warming followed the rise of the CO2, but some warming did happen before the rise of CO2. See: http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature-basic.htm (also read the intermediate explanation and watch the video at the bottom of the page).

Almost no serious skeptics argue that CO2 isn’t a greenhouse gas, because we have very precise measurements for the heat trapping potential of CO2 in laboratories. What skeptics argue about is whether the warming from CO2 can cause feedbacks (principally from increasing water vapor) which cause 3 times as much warming. This is the whole debate over climate sensitivity, but today 20 different lines of evidence now suggest that climate sensitivity is roughly 3 degrees Celsius.

The final argument of skeptics is that the sun, not CO2 is causing the current warming. It is true that past temperatures changes were initiated by changes in orbital cycles which changed the solar irradiation, but that is not true for the recent warming over the last 130 years. First of all, we have very exact measurements of solar irradiation from satellites since 1978 and the amount has not changed very much, nor have Earth surface temperatures correlated very well with the 10-12 year solar cycles. See: http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm
The impact of the sun is minor, having caused 0.2 watts per m2 of radiative forcing compared to 1.7 W/m2 for CO2 and 3 W/m2 for all forcing agents. Over thousands of years, changes in solar irradiation can cause ice ages and interglacial periods, but it is a very slow process taking thousands of years until tipping points are reached, but the recent warming is nothing like the historical warming caused by orbital cycles.

Denis, if you really want to argue that 97% of climate scientists are wrong about anthropogenic global warming, you need to read John Cook’s “The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism” (http://www.skepticalscience.com/docs/Guide_to_Skepticism.pdf) which presents the multiple lines of evidence why climate scientists are sure that human activity is causing the recent warming. All the other theories (changes in solar irradiance, cosmic rays, volcanic emissions, etc) simply don’t hold up to scrutiny. The only one which is plausible is water vapor, but many lines of evidence show that water vapor levels depend upon greenhouse gas levels, not the reverse. Water vapor is a short lived greenhouse gase which stays in the atmosphere for roughly a week, whereas CO2 can stay for thousands of years. In other words, CO2 is the dependent variable; it is not the *cause*, but rather the *effect* of increasing other greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4, N2O, etc).

Best regards, Amos

sabretruthtiger

It seems time to quote one of the greatest physicists of all time Richard Feynman “If the theory doesn’t match the observations, the theory is WRONG”.

GCMs don’t match the observations, therefore the positive CO2 feedback hypothesis upon which they’re based is wrong.

Robert

“GCMs don’t match the observations, therefore the positive CO2 feedback hypothesis upon which they’re based is wrong.”

And your – or your choice of ‘anything but my tailpipe’ blog’s – alternative hypothesis of the day is; what, exactly?

Robert

“GCMs don’t match the observations, therefore the positive CO2 feedback hypothesis upon which they’re based is wrong.”

Hmm, an unsupported claim and a leap…

Chris

Wow, you really have nothing other than “Man made global warming is real”, and “prove it”. Are you paid to promote this garbage and attack people who question the “official” line?

Robert

If you have evidence, bring it forward.

The commenter made a claim and didn’t bother to support it. And you are supporting that sort of unscientific behavior.

Robert

You could have brought forward whatever you wanted to support the op’s claim.

Instead, you made a conscious choice to double down.

Thanks for helping show the paucity of data supporting the ‘skeptical’ opinion.

Robert

“I try to stay with the science. ”

“… the real issue is NASA and NOAA’s lip-synching of the administration position,…”

Denis Ables

What you missed is the detailed response of why it HAD to be lip-synching (and, IN FACT, NASA/NOAA have now backed off that claim, attempting to cover up their earlier egregious claim). I CANNOT believe that the real scientists at NASA went along with that PR release!

Robert

Your “detailed response” was essentially “.. because there seems to be NO evidence showing that co2 has EVER influenced our planet’s temperature.”

I merely pointed out the dichotomy in your thinking.

Denis Ables

I’m responding to a number of different people (on different sites), not always to the same queries. But the response that is likely available in earlier ones at your site, but evidently not to you (I’m not bothering to check that) was as follows:

NASA / NOAA (and the major news media “journalists” who reported their response) did not mention that the difference in recent warm years was miniscule – on the order of a few hundredths of one degree whereas the error measurements were on the order of 1/2 + degree. This implies that the differences are NOISE, not temperature. They also did not make clear to the lay reader that their claim was based on land surface temperatures, which cover less than 30% of the earth. (Actually, much less, because there are no temperature stations in very large uninhabited regions as well. ) Ground based thermometer stations have serious errors. Most are located in UHIs, and so the raw temperature data (which can easily be 5 degrees higher than the surrounding rural area) must be “revised” using estimates of the UHI effect. There are also serious siting problems with many of the stations

Furthermore,NASDA and NOAA also neglected to mention that satellite
measurements do not show 2014 as the warmest. Satellite measurements are more accurate, cover almost the entire earth and deal with the troposphere which is an integral part of the AGW hypothesis. In fact, if the same comparisons of measurements there are used, 2014 ranking is considerably below first.

NASA and NOAA have actually now begun backpedaling. They now make a feeble attempt to justify their earlier claims by using dubious probability theory. Even in that case it turns out that the highest probability is that 2014 is not the hottest.

If that was not on the same site in the string of responses to perhaps another reader, then I apologize. Otherwise, I will accept yours.

You will also note that my statement was (as I recall) that I “try” to deal with the science. Since this issue is so entangled in politics it seems impossible to completely avoid that.

Robert

Thanks for the compilation of talking points from wuwt, c3, climatedepot,…… Lots of great thinking there.

/S. (Just in case)

sabretruthtiger

You pointed out the sites that deal in actual peer reviewed science and not smear as do the unscientific, immoral alarmist sites like the totally debunked and misnamed ‘skepticalscience.com’

Robert

the unscientific, immoral alarmist sites

☺ nothing screams ‘science’ like a bunch of namecalling….

Will Watson

Your making semantic arguments about the nuances of language. These distort the issue; measured in the accepted manner 2014 was warmer than 2010, 2005 or 1998 or any other year for which we reasonably sound records.

Is 2/100’s of a degree imperceptible to anything but closely calibrated instruments. Yes. Certainly. Is that amount of warming, when considered as a discrete, singular datum, insignificant? Yes.

However, seen in the context of the global warming trend since 1950, that 2/100’s of a degree acquires considerable significance. Seen in the context of AGW theory and science, that slight difference becomes yet another datum in a series of data that illustrate the soundness of the theory.

Chris

From the article: “Immediately, sensible people – including several climate scientists –
were telling them that this difference – 0.02 °C – is so tiny that it is
easily beaten by the error margin which prevents you from acquiring any
confidence while deciding which year was actually *the* warmest one.” That 2/100ths of a degree means nothing if the readings are +/- 3/100ths.

Will Watson

The margin of error is pretty much the same for the entire global mean temperature record.

That’s why relative probability is listed for each of the top five warmest years in the NOAA and NASA data sets.

The highest probability is that 2014 was warmer than the next four warmest years on the record. And the record goes back more than 12 decades.

Chris

Have you ever noticed a giant bright ball in the sky? We call it the “sun”, and it gives off heat, megafucktonnes of it, and the “sun” goes through cycles and fluctuations. Stop and think if maybe changes in the “sun’s” activity could cause our temperatures on Earth to fluctuate.
You’re one of those geniuses who believe that heavy snowfall is global warming and lack of snowfall is global warming, warm winters are global warming and cold winters are global warming, and no matter what happens it is normal people causing it, and they should give money to the government as a penalty, don’t work to reduce it, Al Gore, just make sure you can cash in.

Robert

I wonder why there is no link to an actual number for “megafucktonnes”

“Stop and think if maybe changes in the “sun’s” activity could cause our temperatures on Earth to fluctuate…”

Done already. Try figure 5 in the IPCC AR5 SPM.

And in previous reports.

You won’t like the numbers, but you do have the opportunity to cite something besides”megafucktonnes”

Robert

“(and, IN FACT, NASA/NOAA have now backed off that claim, attempting to cover up their earlier egregious claim).”

Quote?
Source?
Nope…..

Denis Ables

You’re joking right? The website on which we’re carrying on a discussion shows the facts. NOAA and NASA have both declared the probability of 2014 being hottest as being less than 50%. Simple arithmetic implies that the probability is higher than 50% that one of the recent years other than 2014 is the “hottest”.

Robert

“NOAA and NASA have both declared the probability of 2014 being hottest as being less than 50%. ”

Quote and cite?

Nope….

.”Simple arithmetic …”

Sorta like that joke “find x” ” here it is” with a circle and an arrow.. .

Denis Ables

Here’s the link to this site. Start at the top. What part don’t you understand?

The unwillingness to quote and cite what you think supports your claims :
“NOAA and NASA have both declared the probability of 2014 being hottest as being less than 50%. “

Denis Ables

So YOU are in DENIAL… YOU believe the quoted NOAA and NASA data at this website, where NOAA now believes the probability of 2014 being the hottest is 48% and the probability for NASA belief on 2014 the warmest is 38% (both also providing lower probabilities for 1998,2005, 2013, and 2014 are just made up by Climate Depot? ExtraORDINARY !

It’s certainly clear you are much more of a DENIER than any skeptic out there. The other readers, no matter how skeptical, will hardly view your subsequent chatter as credible on ANYTHING. (This is right out of the Alinsky playbook!)

Robert

“..(both also providing lower probabilities…”

Answered your own question there…

Denis Ables

How coy! The only valid interpretation is that both NOAA and NASA claim that it’s more than 52% likely that 2014 is NOT the hottest.

Robert

‘Find x’

Circle and arrow, ‘ here it is!’

Robert

“….Alinsky playbook!)”

Robert

“So YOU are in DENIAL”

“There’s not even a correlation showing that co2 has ever had any impact on the planet’s temperature.”

No evidence that CO2 has ever influenced temperatures? Bro, seriously? CO2 was first shown to trap infrared light/heat in laboratory experiments in 1859.

The theory of the greenhouse effect is almost as old, and has withstood challenge for decades, being first derived in 1896. And there are dozens of ice cores that show the relation between CO2 and temperature.

That IS the science.

Denis Ables

Alas. So tiresome. The “real” science that showed co2 influenced heat was performed in a container (which qualifies as a real greenhouse). There are problems with that in the open atmosphere, such as the fact that a greenhouse permits no convection across its HARD boundaries, unlike an open atmosphere. (Satellites have recorded heat escaping to space, so if that wasn’t already obvious to you, it should be now.
Then there is the KNOWN science that co2 ability to impact temperature diminishes as its level increases. (At about 20 ppmv co2 will have theoretically used up about 50% of the few bandwidths of energy available to it. It’s now at 400 ppmv which is about 20 X higher. Do you suppose there’s any more energy available to it?

Seriously, you’re quoting an 1896 experiment in a container as evidence of what’s happening in the planet’s open atmosphere?

Betawelder

Some one should check how many PPM of CO2 was in that container. If it was all CO2 and it raised the temp. a few degrees it would hardly be an argument for CO2 induced warming.

Denis Ables

More likely there was no co2 in the container, or it was regular atmosphere.

Will Watson

Geeezus . . . Tyndall showed the effect of CO2 on LIGHT you morons. not heat. Back to school . . . like you really know this stuff.

Will Watson

That wasn’t the experiment. Geezus . . .

Will Watson

Check yourself before you wreck yourself, bro’. You are every sort of wrong here.

In the first place, CO2 traps a portion of the spectrum solar irradiation–the infrared part– in the atmosphere, not heat. It’s the solar radiation that’s the source of the heat, but CO2 doesn’t “trap heat”. That’s a major misconception up right off the bat, right where anyone can see it.

And the experiments that revealed this law of physics were in 1859, not 1896. You’ve got the dates wrong. Arrhenius (1896) derived basic climate sensitivity to CO2. It was Tyndall (1859) that showed the effect of CO2 on light

And yes, heat escapes into space–although not as much as would w/out our atmosphere. This is what keeps the planet warm. Some light is reflected back into space, but much of the infrared part of the spectrum is contained by the GHG’s. This is the source of the heat imbalance, about 1w/square meter, that is causing AGW.

Finally, your oh-so-impressive sounding claim that CO2 loses its ability to “trap heat” at higher concentrations totally neglects the very clear relation between CO2 concentration and global warmth in the paleoclimatic record: very high concentrations of CO2 played a major role in heating the Earth in the End Permian Event, the Cretaceous “hot house” and the PETM. So,

I guess, by your lights, all the paleoclimatologists who’ve posited this link must have missed this very basic “fact”, that CO2 loses its ability, a very high concentrations, to trap a portion of solar energy. Funny . . . Maybe you should publish this hypothesis.

Denis Ables

? I didn’t mention Arrhenius, Tyndall, etc., so no clue who you are responding to in that regard.

“much of the infrared part of the spectrum is contained by the GHG” Really? And where have YOU decided to “hide” it?

Even over geologic periods the only correlation between co2 and global temperature shows temperature variation first and then, hundreds of years later, similar variation in co2 level. The AGW hypothesis would at least have been plausible if there was some correlation showing global temperature responding to co2 increase, but evidently never happened. There are temperature and co2 graphs over millions of years. Where’s the “meat”, bro?

“Consensus” arguments are not relevant. Never have been in science.

If you choose not to believe a well known fact, that co2 ability to impact temperature diminishes as its level increases that’s your problem, not mine.

The GHG issue has some flaws which may not be minor. There is no convection out from within a greenhouse, obviously not the case in the open atmosphere. Clearly the density of the atmosphere determines how much of that “trapped heat” will escape. On Mars, 95% co2 atmosphere, it’s frigid so it all escapes. On the earth we know that even with co2 levels at up to 20 times higher than now, most of that GHG seems to have had relatively little, if any, impact.

Will Watson

Like I said, every kind of wrong, right out in the open. The only new spice here is your silly semantic argument about the consensus: the consensus is a coincidence, a way of describing the fact that all the data appear to trend one way.

“Consensus” is a linguistically simplistic term to describe this, but the poor choice of term doesn’t negate the science, old boy, not at all.

Denis Ables

“the data” Please provide some evidence rather than pretending to be a Wikipedia robot.

Will Watson

Go screw yourself; I’m out of here.

Denis Ables

Ah Ha. Readers. Take note. Another believer who can’t provide any evidence, (he then recommends a strange act, but has claimed earlier than I’m “mad”!)

Will Watson

There is no debate. There’s only vicious lunatics and oil company hacks like Marc Morano and Anthony Watts on one side, and the vast preponderance of scientific opinion, data and peer reviewed studies on the other.

The data, you harebrained ignoramus, are the global temperature records, as well as proxy records in tree rings, ice coral, coral, cave formations and sediment cores. What else would I have been talking about if not those data?

All these link CO2 and GMT. Taken as a whole they give a clear picture of climate back some 800TY. They all show the same trend: the planet is in an unprecedented upward trend in CO2 concentrations and GMT. That’s all “the consensus” really is. The highest rate of CO2 accumulation we know about, the PETM, about 50MYA, appears to be only about 1/10 as fast as what we’re seeing now.

Denis Ables

The rate of co2 increase is not in question. What’s in question is whether the co2 level has a measurable impact on global warming. None of the yak above speaks to that. As usual, no evidence.

Will Watson

As I said, the impact of CO2 on infrared light is accepted fact. It’s really a foundational insight of atmospheric chemistry, dating from Tyndall (1859), with climate sensitivity first derived by Arhennius in 1896.

And, again, there is an extensive proxy record that shows a relation between CO2 and GMT. Fossils tend to substantiate this relation: the planet is warm when there are high CO2 levels and cool w/low ones.

In combination with the well known fact of CO2’s light/heat trapping properties, there is more than ample evidence of CO2’s impact on GMT. All this is widely known and well accepted. It’s only in the denial sphere that there’s a demand for “more evidence” and “more studies”.

Betawelder

Yes and the relationship is that CO2 lags Temp, in the long term by centuries. And the Ice core studies you mention document the lag. Also you should read or watch Murry Salbys CO2 Study.

Will Watson

CO2 lags temperature only up to a certain point; then, the increased concentration LEADS the warming. This is a lot more complex than most deniers can fathom.

Scientists–who unlike you, know about this stuff–call this a “positive feedback”.

In any given warming for which we have good ice core records, more than 2/3’s of the warming resulted from CO2 feedbacks.

Denis Ables

‘” at some point…..” Must be out beyond several thousand ppmv, a long way off a 2ppmv per year.

Will Watson

About of 90% of the warming in most interglacials is a feedback from CO2. When the oceans warm sufficiently they begin to outgas CO2, and this increase in concentration causes greater solar insolation, which means less infrared light is reflected back into space, which causes more warming.

I have no idea how any of this could be considered controversial. Maybe that’s a physical deformation of the denialsphere, where the laws of physics don’t seem to apply.

Denis Ables

“lags temp only up to a certain point…” That sounds like more speculation. Has that point ever been reached (i.e., is there actual data showing that?) Please provide links.

Barnola, J.-M., P. Pimienta, D. Raynaud, and Y.S. Korotkevich. 1991. CO2-climate relationship as deduced from the Vostok ice core: A re-examination based on new measurements and on a re-evaluation of the air dating. Tellus 43(B):83- 90.

Keeping in mind that we already know that, across geologic periods, it is not the case that co2 has anything to do with atmospheric temperature. Since you’re presumably familiar with the stuff you’ve just provided, surely one has a straight forward study, so kindly point out one of those.

I have no incentive to run around checking many links. You can be sure I’ll be asking some sources to review that link, so be sure not to try to avoid making yourself the “chump”.

Will Watson

They would never be straightforward enough for you, chump. But tell me, how do interglacials begin and end? What forcings end glaciation? Where does the warming come from? CO2 has nothing to do with it? OK: what does?

Denis Ables

Willy: (hey, it’s better than “chump”) You are blaming co2 for causing interglacials? That seems to also conflict with what we know has been happening geologic periods (which include many ice ages, hence many interglacials). I also recall an astrophysicist (from Israel who worked at some point with Svensmark) stating that co2 has been considerably higher than now during two ice ages and going into one ice age.

No. I’m asking you to tell me. What initiates the deglaciation in an interglacial? No bullshit about some nameless Israeli astrophysicist you seem to to recall said something. What forcings initiate an interglacial? If CO2 lags temperature, what causes the initial GMT increase? It’s a simple question.

Denis Ables

Scientists don’t know much about feedbacks, but some are willing to speculate not only on whether water vapor gives a positive feedback, but how much it is.

Will Watson

Bullshit . . . much of the paleoclimatic record makes no sense at all unless CO2 feedbacks are figured in.

Water vapor is an effect as well as a cause of warming. For every degree C of warming the atmosphere is capable of holding 7% more water vapor.

Denis Ables

“Ice cores show the relation between co2 and temperature” ? REALLY ? and references to those please.

Denis Ables

That tiresome experiment in the 1800s was in a closed container. Convection stops at the container boundaries. In the open atmosphere satellite measurements show heat escaping to space. Then there is the well known fact that co2 ability to influence temperature diminishes as co2 level increases. The only number I’ve ever seen (but can’t find now) was from an engineer which stated that at about 20ppmv co2 had already used up 50% of the few sun energy bandwidths available to it.

??? What’s the point of this link ???? Just another way to avoid admitting that there has been no additional warming for quite some time?

Robert

Time to pull on the waders….

Your lack of bringing forward evidence says more than enough about the ‘anything but my tailpipe’ talking points.

Denis Ables

Me? Bringing forward evidence? I’m the skeptic, remember, you’re supposed to convince me that there is some evidence supporting your belief. Nothing but obfuscation has been provided. Even if you could show some period when that was the case – it can’t be over geologic periods because we know temperature variation happened first. There are only brief periods during the last century or two when temperature happened to be going the same way as co2, but there are just as many periods when the temperature was not going up.

Now you’ve been vigorously arguing about how the 2/100 of one percent was a meaningful year-to-year comparison,and,lo,both NOAA and NASA threw you under the bus about the hottest 2014. Of course, that wasn’t really necessary since anyone with the IQ of a potted plant understands that the error band was several times wider than 2/100. Those year-to-year differences were noise. (Even Hansen – NASA – tried to pull that b.s., but at least when confronted would admit it wasn’t meaningful.

You’re on very shakey ground. I’d say it’s way past time to put on waders or anything else unrelated to the climate issue. Better stick with your day job.

Robert

“I’m the skeptic, remember, you’re supposed to convince me that there is some evidence supporting your belief.”

What skepticism isn’t is being dubious or suspicious. Just because you don’t trust someone doesn’t mean that you’re being skeptical. If you don’t trust someone, you check what they’ve presented; either by doing it again yourself, or by finding other sources that either confirm or contradict what they’ve presented. Real skepticism takes effort and investigation.

What you’ve just done is attempt to redefine skepticism so that you can make unjustifiable claims and expect the skeptics to accept your proclamations without evidence. Sorry.

It’s science that is at stake. The alarmist scientists in climate science have long since established that their “science” is lacking. Even now the likes of Michael Mann have used every possible venue to avoid releasing data related to his “research”.

Your actions are not dissimilar. It’s now clear, even by NASA and NOAA which you were initially very enthralled with, that the 2/100 of a degree comparisons were bogus. You of course would not accept that obvious fact from a skeptic, but instead drop discussion on that issue (once it explodes in your face — you cannot defame the government agencies which you’re otherwise counting on) rather than admit you’re silly position.

It’s a good example for readers to follow, to see how the alarmists operate. Science is nowhere to be seen. It’s all politics, and Alinsky provides the guideposts for the likes of you.

Robert

As before; read closely. You are trying to change the thesis of the quote to create an argument. And we know which logical fallacy that fits under. …

Denis Ables

The readers have seen you dodging the truth. You are not able to provide any evidence that co2 has EVER been shown to have an impact on global temperature. Lots of obfuscation, but no evidence. You would have maintained your bogus position on a “warming trend” based on a 2/100 of a degree change, but in the face of NOAA and NASA’s backtracking you have gone silent on that one. (NOAA and NASA are still using bogus priorities, probably because of so much heat from scientists, both inside and outside the government agencies, but they’ve nonetheless taken the wind out of your sails. You cannot deny them because they are the “authority” and you refuse to recognize that it is indeed authority which is in question.

Robert

” You are not able to provide any evidence that co2 has EVER been shown to have an impact on global temperature. ”

Unfortunately, that wasn’t part of the discussion until you dropped it in rather than provide your evidence for other claims.

Shifting positions? Nope, still a skeptic. OBfuscation? That’s a joke. My questions were clear. Your responses was the obfuscation. Youre referenes to Sagan were rather mistifying.

I provided my concerns about the AGW claim, and your response is to ask me to “prove ” my concerns. It’s simple if you have any evidence, but unfortunately, you have nothing to offer, yet you’re an avid believer in a position which you cannot justify.

Robert

“I provided my concerns about the AGW claim, and your response is to ask me to “prove ” my concerns.”

Your “concerns” were claims from ‘anthing but my tailpipe’ sources.

And you were unable to source the science nor even press release quotes that would have supported those claims.

So, at best tertiary sources. Tertiary sources.

Ask your kids or grand kids if their science teacher would accept a tertiary source in a science fair project or a report.

Denis Ables

More obfuscation. You can’t provide any evidence that co2 has EVER had an impact on the global temperature, but you believe anyway. All the rest is just obfuscation, a smoke screen to avoid having to confess that you know nothing helpful in a discussion with a skeptic.

Robert

When the topic of the article is whether “..co2 has EVER had an impact ..” , and if I decide to go to site that would print such a black hole of derp, then we can have that discussion.

You introduced your own topic in an effort – lasting 3 or 4 days now- to not source the quotes and cites that could have supported your claims.

We were still asking today; you still havent produced. And now you have labeled your claims as “concerns” in yet another effort to avoid showing the quote and cites you claimed you’d look for. Those multiple layers of “smoke screen” smells like obfuscation.

Robert

“..instead drop discussion on that issue ..”

The thread show you’ve made a conscious choice to not big forward the quotes and cites informing your claims. Or rather, the ‘anything but my tailpipe’ claims.

Robert

“..Alinsky provides the guideposts..”

Sigh…..

Robert

“I’ll look around for the original quote, but there’s no point. ”

“No point” in supporting your claim?

You made a claim that should be easy to support with a primary source yet you demure and declaim and offer excuses.

sabretruthtiger

Robert, anyone that knows anything about the climate change debate knows that surface temperatures are subject to urban heat island effect along with bad sensor placement and the elimination of high altitude sensors from collation to artificially elevate temperatures.

Satellites are not subject to this.

Robert

“..urban heat island effect..”

Tell us more.

Robert

“if its a news media article without a..”

I’m starting to consider the possibility that someone posted a talking point that resonated and there was no skepicism involved in accepting it.

And that you’d think that is an acceptable level of ‘proof’says a lot about the level of ‘skepticism’ involved when looking for evidense that fits the desired conclusion.

Denis Ables

As I said at the point where you asked for backup info, it might not have been a primary source and so not relevant because anything less wouldn’t be acceptable to any good alarmist (who, while invariably skeptical of anything skeptics say, do not question their own fearless leaders).

So, no lecture needed, or even relevant.

However by now anyone interested knows enough about surface station temperature data to know it is suspect, and, even if every revision to the raw data could have been justified (unlikely), that process introduces errors which exceed 2/100 of a degree.

Incidentally, now that both NOAA and NASA have backed down on their “2014 hottest” claim, are you still trying to argue there is a warming trend?

It’s worth keeping in mind, that there are serious questions about the AGW hypothesis even if global temperature begins increasing again.

Denis Ables

As is now obvious from the recent NOAA / NASA backflip on “2014 hottest”, is there not an equally valid question about whether direct declarations from these government agencies are accurate.

Robert

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Denis Ables

That is the 2nd response to your comment about the quote not coming from a direct source. That one evidently appears before the first one.

Robert

So basically a stringing together of some unsupported claims. More like a dried macaroni necklace than a cogent thread of thought.

It’s what happens when there’s a paucity of evidence for the claims; a gish gallop.

Thanks!

Robert

. “NASA has long since publicly pointed out that satellite data (which covers very nearly the entire earth) is more accurate than surface thermometers”

There days and all we get is a screen shot of a newspaper article that doesn’t have a quote.

Seems some ‘skeptics’ have a low low bar ….

BajaDreamer

Some true believers spend too much time in bars.

4TimesAYear

Knew it was B.S. They need to pull the plug on the climate change issue altogether. Enough is enough.

Will Watson

Tell it to Mother Nature . . . before she pulls the plug on our civilization.

BajaDreamer

Ask your goddess “Mother Nature” which would be more devastating to “civilization”, warming or cooling?

Will Watson

Cooling will never be a problem for our species again. I’m worried about reality, not some ignorant delusion.

BajaDreamer

Another baseless prediction from the truly delusional side which has been making them all along. Why am I not surprised?

Will Watson

+.02 degrees is warmer, not cooler, or the same. What’s the beef? Climate Depot is making semantic arguments about meaning and quality, not quantity and data. The data are clear. 2014 was the warmest year in the record, and without an El Nino too.

Trenton Hansen

I will not diverge from the talking points.
I will not diverge from the talking points.
I will not diverge from the talking points.
I will not diverge from the talking points.
I will not diverge from the talking points.

Will Watson

Morano is reduced to making semantic arguments about the significance of .02C.

NASA is not making any such claims ; those fractions of a degree mean that 2014 was warmer than 1998, 2005 and 2010. That’s not interpretation; that’s what the data show. End of story.

There was no “pause” anyhow; that was just another narrative spun by the denialist camp. You guys are the ones with the talking points; that’s what someone is left with when the facts are elsewhere.

BajaDreamer

Funny, but NASA also admitted that they were only 38% certain about 2014 having been the hottest year. Or did you miss that? It was reported right here on this very site, as well as a few other places. (Oh I know you don’t like this place, but play along anyhow, just for conversations sake professor.)

>>” Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies claimed its analysis of world temperatures showed ‘2014 was the warmest year on record’ – But it emerged that GISS’s analysis is subject to a margin of error – Nasa admits this means it is far from certain that 2014 set a record at all – The Nasa climate scientists who claimed 2014 set a new record for global warmth last night admitted they were only 38 per cent sure this was true. Yet the Nasa press release failed to mention this….”

Perhaps you did miss it…….or simply chose to ignore it because it didn’t support your position.

And if there was “no pause to begin with”, then why are those on your side scrambling so much to explain something which you claim never was?

Will Watson

Not quite. In their presentation last week, NASA scientists noted that there was a 38 percent chance that 2014 was the hottest year, but only a 23 percent chance that the honor goes to the next contender, 2010, and a 17 percent chance that it goes to 2005.

The same slide from that presentation shows that NOAA’s scientists were even more confident in the 2014 record, ranking it as having a 48 percent probability, compared with only an 18 percent chance for 2010 and a 13 percent chance for 2005.

You’ve cherrypicked one part of the PR, and mistaken it for the whole. Once again, you extract a number from its context and then claim the number means something that, viewed in context, it really doesn’t mean. Perfect.

The “cherry picking” done here was done entirely by your side professor, (I merely added more info from the same “report”.), when it decided to report only a small portion of the story. For example; why was NASA’s comment that there was also a 68% chance that their statement about 2014 having been the hottest year was false, left out of most news reports entirely? It’s there if you care to look, but in all your blustering you didn’t happen to mention it either.

But . . . the NASA/NOAA figures also show that it’s much more likely that 2014 was warmer than the next four warmest years, and without an El Nino too. Plus, all five of these years are much warmer than the 20th-century average, regardless of which one is actually warmest.

The only warming that would satisfy your need for certainty would be something like the warming we saw in 1998, an El Nino year that was so far above average that it was what statisticians call an anomaly.

Funny how there’s not very much discussion that the highs of 2010, 2005 and 2014 all came without the ENSO that marked the 1998 anomaly. In other words, heat that was anomalous in 1998, is now normal.

BajaDreamer

But but but but but butbutbut….but…but………..

After a while you sound like a small outboard motor in bad need of a tuneup or repair.

Denis Ables

Sorry, the error in measurement is about half a degree, so .02 degrees warmer (or cooler) is MEANINGLESS. You’re playing with NOISE not temperature.

But, if you think .02 is okay, then satellite data shows by .03 degrees that 2014 was NOT the warmest. Care to proceed with your argument?

Will Watson

It’s not a given “error in measurement”, bro’. It’s the range of POSSIBLE error; look at the graphs.

In other words, it could have actually been hotter, as easily as cooler than the estimate.

You might also notice that ALL of the years in the graph show a similar range of possible error. So the entire global temperature record has a certain possibility of error. Nobody is hiding this.

You should note, however, that Muller (2012) a very high profile analysis of the global temp recording system, found that it was accurate for purposes of estimating global temperature..

Denis Ables

“could actually have been hotter as easily as cooler ..” I wrote the same thing somewhere on this site or another one…. but don’t bother every time “bro”

Isn’t Muller the author of a recent study where his lead writer (Curry, as I recall) walked away from his publicly declared conclusions? Muller and you belong to a small subset of scientists if you don’t recognize that quibbling about 2/100 of a degree is meaningless.

Will Watson

No, I’m talking about the Richard Muller whose 2012 study of the global temperature recording apparatus concluded that it was sound. And 2/100’s of degree would be meaningless if it wasn’t part of a larger trend.

You denialists have made this bed, now you need to lie down in it.

You were the ones who advanced the meme of the “hiatus”, the meme of “the planet hasn’t warmed in 17 years”, etc. Well, the record now shows that it has, and that 14 of the 15 warmest years have been since 2000.

Denis Ables

Whether you are referring to ground based temperature stations or satellite, the difference between years has been miniscule, well within the error band, so meaningless.

Satellite measurements do NOT show 2014 the “hottest”, so in terms of a trend (according to your senseless argument) it must be cooling ! In any case there has indeed been no additional warming for almost two decades and co2 level is at its highest in quite a long while.

For pete’s sake, both NASA and NOAA have already backed off their claim, now mostly trying to do a CYA.

Of course most of the warmist years have been since 2000. We are in a warming. (Of course, even the IPCC recognizes that it’s been warming during the MWP.)

Will Watson

Again, this is an argument about language, not data. The latter show, clearly that there has been “additional” warming (from what point?) since 1998. That’s what it means when the warmest years on record are all but one after 1999.

All you’re doing is quibbling over the meaning of terms like “additional” and “substantial’ and “significant”, but according to how GMT is measured, 2014 was warmer than every previous year. That’s what the data show.

The lower troposphere (up to 40K feet) is what the satellites measure, but that is is not the sum of the warming, not the site of all global temperature. It’s only when you abstract the satellite record from any and all contexts that your claim (“satellites show no warming in 2014”) is even possible. But why would you do that if you were interested in knowing about climate change.

Troposphere temps tend to have cooling bias from the startosphere anyhow. And you deniers have got to get your talking points straight: if a few fractions of a degree warmer indicate no warming, then neither do a few fractions of a degree suggest cooling. You can’t have it both ways.

Denis Ables

Yup, that’s the same Muller who came to conclusions even his lead writer (a climate scientist, incidentally) walked away from his remarks.

Denis Ables

Data not clear. NASA and NOAA selected an EL Nino index which conflicts with at least one other approach. If you like .02 degree warmer, you’ll love the fact that satellite data claims 2014 NOT warmest by .03 degres.

Will Watson

The El Nino year of 1998 was an anomaly. 2014 was not. Period.

Betawelder

Why was anyone surprised they lied, NASA and NOAA wouldn’t be the first corrupt Gov. agencies to lie to keep the coffers filled. What would happen if they were honest about how little effect CO2 actually had on the Climate.

Will Watson

NASA’s whole budget for a given year is about 25% of what Exxon declares as profit in a given year.

In other words, Exxon wouldn’t be the first big corporation to lie through its teeth to keep the coffers filled, in this case by funding disinformation campaigns and websites like this one.

jfreed27

OK, which year was the warmest? 2014 more probable than 1998, the ballyhooed first year of the “hiatus”

Denis Ables

2014 NOT hottest according to satellite data. (Not even hottest according to surface temperature data, as NOAA and NASA now admit.)

Will Watson

The satellites measure the lower troposphere, not the surface. What I’ve read is that when you remove the cooling bias from the stratosphere, satellites show the troposphere is actually warming much like the surface.

But even if you don’t remove the bias–why? I don’t know–and 2014 looks like maybe the 3rd-8th hottest year in troposphere on the satellite record, does this somehow mean that 2014 was not the hottest year in terms of GMT? Again, this seems like semantics, not science. If not for the fact that 14 of the 15 hottest years have been since 2000, the lower rate of tropospheric warming might mean something. Given the reality, however, the 2014 temps–be they surface or troposphere–show the larger warming trend is still going on.

Also, if the slightly cooler tropo temps in 2014 are as significant as you make them seem, then you deniers need to stop claiming that warmer temps just as slight mean nothing significant is happening to GMT. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say -.02F is a big deal, but +.02 F is insignificant.

Denis Ables

Satellite measurements agree very well with balloon data. ” 14 of the 15 hottest years since 2000″ has little meaning when there is total agreement that we are in a warming period which began in the 70s, the only issue being that alarmist refuse to acknowledge there has been NO additional warming, even as co2 has continued to rise throughout this period (and the prior cooling period) to reach record not seen in a very long time. (Even NOAA and NASA have backed down and now have revised their “2014 hottest” claim, via some dubious “probabilities”, which indicate that it is more likely that one of the other recent years is the actually “hottest”. They’re playing with the NOISE.

“you can’t have it both ways..” Amazing you should say that. All the skeptics have said is that there’s been no additional warming, whereas the alarmists claim that .02 is significant. In the face of that stupid argument I responded that, if it is, then the satellite data states 2014 is NOT the hottest and the difference backing that claim up are larger than .02. Indeed is the alarmists trying to make hay with NOISE, not the skeptics. The warming trend has STOPPED. Calling it a “hiatus” as the IPCC has done is erroneous. That term implies that the warming WILL restart. (It may or may not, but it has STOPPED.)

Will Watson

So tell me champ, why aren’t you publishing this marvelous melange of crap in Nature Geoscience or Science? Oh, that’s right, the entire scientific establishment of the planet–all the top tier journals, all the grant providing foundations, every government and science academy/governing body–is in cahoots against the truth. Right.

Your BS is too deep for me, bro’. You’re a genius at making crooked paths out of relatively straight ones. I doubt that even you really understand what you’re trying explain, and your writing sucks so bad as to ensure this result for your readers.

Every decade since 1980 has been warmer than the one before it. The GMT record–which is sound–shows that the warmest years were 2014, 2010 and 2005, and that all the years since 1999 have been warmer than the entire 20th century except for 1998. NASA and NOAA have retracted none of this. You are so full of shit you should be rezoned as a sewage plant.

Denis Ables

My, my, such vile language. I’m just a curious bystander who happens to be a skeptic, and as I read a bit more about the “climate change” issue, I became more skeptical. All I’ve asked for is evidence that co2 has had a measurable impact insofar as global temperature increase. (unless the correlation is stronger than the last few decades, it hardly qualifies as evidence.)

Your business on “every decade been warmer” since 1980 involves only two decades. There were several hundreds years of warming during the MWP, followed by a long stretch of cooling during the LIA. co2 level remained the same during both periods. So we know natural climate variation could be responsible for our current warming (such as it is.)

Before the 80s there was THREE decades of cooling, but co2 was increasing. Surely you’re not trying to claim that we had additional warming during the last decade or two? If you are one of the DENIERs who doesn’t recognize that there’s been no additional warming for almost the past two decades, there’s hardly any point for you to waste your time or mine.

Instead of pointing out one of your links, as I requested, you now claim NASA and NOAA have retracted “none of this”. They have certainly retracted their clam that 2014 was the hottest. In fact they’ve declared (with undoubtedly dubious probabilities) that 2014 is not likely the warmest. Again, if you’re in DENIAL on this, it’s hardly worth continuing your rant.

Try Nature, Geoscience first, and if they won’t take it, Geophysical Research Letters. But check that arithmetic first.

As I said, you’re full of crap, but maybe I’m just not sufficiently informed to realize that you’re right and the entire scientific establishment of the planet is wrong.

Denis Ables

c’mon Willie, it’s not about me. I’m just the curious guy asking a rabid believer in AGW to show me a tiny bit of evidence … when co2 increase resulted in an increase in the globe’s temperature. Don’t blame me for you lack of ability to do that, (perhaps it’s not a lack of ability, just a lack of actual evidence). I also understand the shame you must feel, after arguing that 2/100 of one degree “increase” shows a warming trend, followed closely by both the culprits ( NOAA and NASA) throwing you under the bus.

Not a good day or two for you AGW rabid believers.

Will Watson

Read Richard Alley’s “The Two Mile Time Machine”, perhaps the most accessible explanation of how ice cores are used to track ancient climate. You can read, right?

But, again, if you don’t accept Tyndall, Arhennius, Callendar, Revell, Keeling and everyone since–including NASA, NOAA, the NAS, the Royal Society and everyone else–there’s no reason for you to accept the relevance of the ice core records or any other scientific evidence of the causal link between CO2 and GMT. I sent you references for about two dozen peer reviewed studies, most of them in Nature and Geophysical Research Letters, two top journals. That should be enough “evidence” linking CO2 to GMT.

What we have with AGW is a rock solid scientific theory–one that explains a whole range of geophysical phenomena–backed up by 134 years of global temperature records, and millions of data and thousands of peer reviewed studies across all the scientific disciplines. No one single study is going to mean anything–especially to fanatics like you–but, taken together, it’s an enormous weight of evidence that AGW is real.

Denis Ables

Your “rock solid” science ? Hardly.

First of all that ancient experiment showing that adding co2 to a container causes temperature to increase has little to do with the open atmosphere.
Ever hear of convection? Not possible from within a closed container. Ever hear that co2 ability to influence temperature diminishes as its level increases? The alarmists don’t dwell on that solid as a rock science.

This gets tiresome. Do you know that satellite measurements show that heat is escaping to space? (Not from within a closed container, but from the open atmosphere.)

Any credible skeptic is willing to change his mind if there is evidence. I can’t get anybody to provide the only piece of evidence that really matters, namely that co2 increase has a measurable influence on global temperature. Not over geologic periods certainly, because temperature variations come way before similar variations in co2 level. (carbon cycle)

“enormous weight” where? what? But no obfuscation please. I’ve watched two PhD thermodynamics specialists argue with each other until the argument degenerated into name calling. No reason to get into that. Let’s talk about the basics. There is no data to back up the hypothesis. As Lindzen says, it’s not even plausible.

But, like Diogenes I’m carrying a lit lantern looking for that alarmist that can convince me with some evidence. But it looks as if you folks are in trouble because you can’t even come up with a correlation between co2 and the planet’s temperature and we have millions of years of proxy data for both co2 level and temperature.

As another of those rabid believers, you should be anxious to enlighten the world. Evidence? Give it a try, but please no nonsense about the rising sea level or bizarre weather.

Will Watson

So for 150+ years, all the scientists who thought that CO2 warmed the atmosphere–including a number of Nobel Prize winners–has been wrong, and nobody ever caught it.

How exactly is that possible. The notion that CO2 regulates global temperature has been since the middle of the 19th century. It underpins many other geosciences. If there’s no connection (you say “correlation” which is so incredibly stupid it’s kind of cute) then a lot of what science thinks it knows about a lot of stuff is dead wrong.

You’re confused anyhow; the experiment you reference was Angstrom in about 1908, trying to overturn Arrhenius (1896). Angstrom’s measurements proved to be off; he thought that CO2’s ability to absorb IR light would fall of sharply at concentrations above .04% or about 400ppm. But in reality, this would not happen until about 1000ppm or 0.1%.

As far as you being Diogenes w/the proverbial lamp, the reason it’s so dark is because your head is so far up your ass. Or maybe it’s Baja’s ass; he seems to be a little short.

Denis Ables

Not many scientists have been making the claim you speak of until relatively recently (definitely not 150 years). My question remains. Where’s the actual evidence? I suppose it could turn out to be true, (so could that claim by the little man on the corner with a beard, raggedy clothes, a cup for handouts, and a sign reading “the world is ending”)

I might even drop a coin or two in cup, but if the government decides to believe him and wants to spend a few trillion dollars in an attempt to solve this “problem”, as a taxpayer I get to ask .. where’s the evidence?

Regarding the point of diminishing impact by co2, the actual numbers could be closer to what you say … I only recall seeing one analysis on that several years ago. Whatever it is, almost every scenario by every computer model continues to significantly exceed the actual temperatures subsequently recorded, and the modelers have tweaked their models several times and are still projecting temperatures way too high. Something is obviously wrong with the hypothesis (or all the models have bugs).

As for your last paragraph, all I ask is that you concentrate on the science rather than on other male’s posterior annex.

Will Watson

You keep asking this stupid question, “Where’s the evidence?” I try to answer it the way that anyone who understands the science would. The “actual evidence” is in the ice cores, in tree rings, sediment cores, in the 150 year old scientific theory of AGW, which is the basis of any number of geosciences. It’s also in satellite records that show a reduction in the amount of IR light that’s reflected back into space.

Tweaked the models? What the hell does that mean? Modelers are continually correcting and critiquing their models, but it’s the nature of GCM runs (look it up) that each one features distinct inputs.

In other words, you don’t know what GCM actually are and do. Combine this with your utterly obtuse refusal to see that I’ve answered your question, “Where’s the evidence?” and you are in total head-up-your ass territory, your attempt at homophobic humor aside.

Denis Ables

That’s not a valid answer. In fact, ice cores, tree rings, sediment cores, and other proxies all show that over geologic periods temperature variation occurs first, and similar variations in co2 happen hundreds of years LATER. The data you refer to is certainly not showing that co2 has any impact on temperature. You’re not thinking. Why is that hard for you to understand?

Will Watson

CO2 first lags, then leads GMT increases. CO2 is a feedback of warming, and a cause of it too.

When the planet warms, the oceans “de-gas”. That means they emit CO2 that would stay in the ocean at cooler temperatures. None of this is controversial at all. It’s basic to our understanding of how ice ages end and begin.

So tell me, what causes the initial warming in an interglacial? What catalyzes de-glaciation? This is a very basic question.

Denis Ables

Of course the carbon cycle is obvious, but that’s showing the only correlation around. What YOU can’t demonstrate is any evidence that co2 has EVER influenced the global temperature.

Your quizzes on causes of interglacial periods are for others. (If co2 were involved in either of those, you’d be able to show some evidence that, so far, you haven’t been able to show.)

Will Watson

If you have to look up the answer to my question, you have no idea of the mechanisms of climate change. Your play was to immediately answer, and then spin that fact into you claim that CO2 doesn’t cause warming.

But instead, you’ve waited like 48 hours to even mention the question. That says a lot. There’s no feint here; I honestly think you don’t know. And if you don’t and you were being honest, with yourself and me, you’d realize how little you actually know about this topic.

Denis Ables

I remain uninterested in taking your irrelevant quiz. What is relevant is that NASA and NOAA have now stated that they are uncertain about which year was hottest. That’s all they should have said. But they assigned probabilities to each of the candidate years. This shows that they’re less certain (less than 50%) about 2014 being hottest than they would be about predicting the flip of a coin. That implies that the probability of 2014 NOT being the hottest is the sum of all alternative outcomes (namely more than 50%). In other words they’re more certain that 2014 is not the hottest.

Will Watson

But they’re also MORE certain that 2014 was the hottest year on record than they are about any other year, including, of course, the next hottest five years on the record.

Which would also mean that NASA/NOAA is much, more confident that 2014 was warmest than any other year besides those five.

Hey, Denis, if CO2 doesn’t initiate interglacials, what does? If you can’t answer this off the top of your head, you don’t know anything about climate science.

Denis Ables

As I pointed out earlier to you (? or to Robert) there’s no getting around the fact that, according to both NOAA and NASA, 2014 is NOT as likely to be the hottest as some earlier year or years.

To make your feel better, it’s not ever going to be resolved. The data is already in and the best they could do is stick some probabilities on it.

I doubt that the probabilities slapped on the years by these two groups will be satisfactory to anyone or that it can easily be justified. This was more a matter of both agencies desperately attempting to circle their wagons after one of their activists jumped the gun. Judging by what is going on at various other websites, they have not succeeded,and, in any event, all the measurements in question were evidently within the uncertainty range, so the whole exercise is meaningless.

I’m not much interested in what you think I know or don’t know about climate science. All that’s either relevant or not is what stands up after investigation. I spend enough time responding to bogus claims, and have no interest in taking your quiz.

Will Watson

You didn’t know, and you can neither admit your ignorance to yourself or to the board.

Denis Ables

Truly amazing. Here you are, totally in DENIAL that it’s unlikely that 2014 was the “hottest”, even as both NASA and NOAA admit it, and you’re referring to ME as ignorant !
Truly amazing.

BajaDreamer

You’ll have to forgive the good professor. He got his chones in a wad while attempting to pontificate to someone else earlier.
FYI, he says he has a PhD in English, teaches “environmental writing”, and is an activist/lobbyist for the pro AGW crowd, just so you know. He also apparently has little interest in any dissenting opinion on the subject, or actually discussing said opinion. So wasting words with him is pointless unless it is being done for pure entertainment value.

Denis Ables

Ah yes, those English professors. They don’t seem to be very familiar with scientific method.

You’re the one who knows all the science that actual scientists have somehow missed for 150 years.

That makes you the Mr. Bigshot Mr. Nobel Prize winning genius, someone who should immediately seek publication in high profile peer reviewed journal, where your acumen will be recognized for what it is.

For exactly what it is.

Denis Ables

While I’d love to take credit for being correct when all real scientists were wrong, this situation hardly fits that scenario.

You are falling back to the ludicrous arguments about “consensus” when the surveys supposedly showing a consensus are themselves bogus. Also, 150 years hardly fits. Most of the action on this issue has taken place in just the past couple of decades. Before that, it involve just a handful.

In any event it is possible that what others BELIEVE could be correct. I’m merely stating that appears to be no evidence to back up that BELIEF. Evidence please, in your own words, shouldn’t be necessary to supply links, and I’ll not bother if you can’t even articulate what you believe the link contains.

Will Watson

NASA said that there was a 48% chance that 2014 was the warmest year, but only an 18% chance that 2010 was, and only a 13% chance that 2005 was, and only a 5% chance that the fabulous 1998 was. That last one is important because that’s the year that you deniers always seize on as the beginning of the fabled “hiatus”.

NOAA was a little less certain, but their figures are similar: 38% probability for 2014; 23% for 2010; 17% for 2005 and only 4% for the fabled 1998.

In other words, there’s nothing to retract, it’s just that this Climate Depot article is a fat, stupid, freaking lie. Hey Denis, is 1980-2010 still only two decades?

You don’t seem to understand probabilities. If there’s a 48% chance that 2014 is the hottest, then there is a 52% chance that it is not.
For NOAA that possibility is even larger. Mind you, I donot believe those probabilities are based on anything even feintly resembling scientific analysis, but both NASA and NOAA are definitely retreating from their firm claim that 2014 was “hottest”.

When you can’t accept something like that because it flies in the face of some silly belief you hold, by resisting acceptance you’re just losing credibility. Everything you say becomes is viewed with a jaundiced eye.

Will Watson

Damn, Denis, you are dense: there is a much higher likelihood that 2014 was the warmest year than there is for any other year. That’s all that NASA/NOAA are saying.

This claim includes all the other years on the record that have had a claim on the title “warmest year”.

The word you want is “faint”. The idiom is “faintly believe”. “Feint” means fake, kind of like your analysis, kind of like Morano’s headline, which is fake. NASA/NOAA have in no way backed off on their claim that 2014 was the warmest year.

Denis Ables

You’ve stated another interpretation which is misleading. I’ll demonstrate why:

Let’s suppose there were 48 years (not counting 2014), all possible candidates for the highest temperature for 2014, and each was given a probability of 2%(that uses up 96%). Suppose 2014 had a probability of 4%. We’ve now accounted for all eventualities. Your interpretation would still be that 2014 was warmest because it had a higher probability than any one other year. TRUE. but there’s a 96% probability that it is NOT 2014.

The logic is no different in the actual case. It is your confused thinking.

(The Wikipedia exercise wasn’t really necessary. That’s known as an overlooked typo, considerably less severe than overlooked LOGIC.)

Robert

“…ballyhooed first year..”

Funny, but not in a humorous way, how those talking points just don’t hold up well.

And so many people who seem to think they’re not being given a fair audienice in the discourse. Even though there are journals and what they seem to equate with a published paper; the interview…

Robert

“Interestingly, if you make a correction for ENSO phase, the UAH record would also have had 2014 as a record year (though barely). The impact on the RSS data is less. For GISTEMP, removing the impact of ENSO makes 2014 an even stronger record year relative to previous ones (0.07ºC above 2005, 2006 and 2013), supporting the notion that the underlying long-term trend has not changed appreciably over the last decade or so. ” http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/01/thoughts-on-2014-and-ongoing-temperature-trends/

Robert

Thanks Denis Ables for the up vote!

Robert

As a matter of fact, according to the NASA data this year is dead on the projection we would have made back then by using the “global warming continues without slowing down” hypothesis. By the time 1999 came to a close, a warming trend was abundantly clear:
. . .
That kinda lets the air out of any idea that global warming has slowed down — the data simply do not support it. But in a clever misinterpretation, one ultimately rooted in cherry-picking, there are those who actually claim that the data do demonstrate global warming has slowed down.

Apparently you also missed the part about NASA that it was only 38% certain about it’s comment on 2014 having been the hottest year. That hardly makes it a believable pronouncement.

Will Watson

Look at the chart at the top of the article, short stuff. NOAA said that there was
a 48% chance that 2014 was the warmest year, but only an 18% chance
that 2010 was, only a 13% chance that 2005 was, and only a 5% chance
that the fabulous 1998 was.

That last one is important because that’s the year that you deniers always seize on as the beginning of the fabled “hiatus”. NASA was a little less certain, but their figures are similar: 38% probability for 2014; 23% for 2010; 17% for 2005 and only 4% for the fabled 1998.

To put this another way, there’s a notably higher probability that 2014 was the warmest year, rather than the next four highest years, . Duh . . . There’s no retraction here. Morano framed it as if there was and all the pointy head deniers went along for the ride.

BajaDreamer

Nice how you can quote all those percentages professor. One you failed to quote was that NASA also said there was a 68% chance that the claim of 2014 being the warmest was false.
Funny how you and others like you love to parse things rather than presenting the whole since doing so in no way reinforces your stance.

The NASA/NOAA press conference wasn’t hiding anything. You just don’t understand the protocol of scientific measurements.

BajaDreamer

OK professor, exactly where did I say or even insinuate that NASA/NOAA was hiding anything in this case? In fact it was NASA that reported the 38% figure, and I plainly said that NASA was also the one who reported the 68% probability that the report was completely wrong. This has nothing at all to do with the “protocol of scientific measurements”.

The ones who were/are hiding such things are those in the left leaning media. But you already know that, don’t you.

Will Watson

NASA/NOAA reported those very things. They didn’t hide them. Nor did they retract their conclusion that 2014 is the warmest year to date.

The idea that they did those things is simply a distortion of the facts, an ideologically twisted interpretation of a fairly straightforward set of events. That’s why it hasn’t gained any traction in legitimate media.

Of course you assume that that’s because of the universal scientific, government and media conspiracy against the facts, which is insane, but which is the only other explanation for the climate change consensus . . . besides the fact that AGW theory and science are solid.

BajaDreamer

Is there an echo here professor? I plainly already stated that NASA/NOAA had indeed reported these things and were not trying to hide anything. I also said quite plainly: “The ones who were/are hiding such things are those in the left leaning media.”, and that is irrefutable.

Don’t believe it? Then please show me a single major media entity that pointed out anything other than “2014 is the warmest year”, when NASA’s/NOAA’s own reported figures say that there is a greater chance, (Probability?), that it isn’t the warmest year?

The science behind AGW was never all that solid, and your “consensus” is dissolving while glaciers are returning and polar ice is increasing.

Will Watson

Actually, Short Stuff, the consensus is stronger than ever. If you ever got off these ridiculous AGW denial sites and looked around, you’d know this.

I started commenting on Morano’s haflfbaked idiocy a couple weeks back by arguing that he was making semantic arguments–arguments about words, language, rhetorical strategies–instead of data.

For two weeks, that’s pretty much all you’ve done too. “The left-leaning media”? Why would anyone with half a brain take that seriously? You mean like CNN, the NYT, WaPo? Bro’ those are establishment media of the highest ilk. You;ve been quibbling for two weeks now. Isn’t your quibble about worn out?

BajaDreamer

No more so that your elitist pomposity is.

What I’m wondering more than anything else is why, after offering to show you numerous times the reasons I hold the opinion(s) I do on the subject, you have yet to take me up on the offer?

Will Watson

You opinions are in error. I know the science. If you hold opinions about AGW that defy logic, science and reason, you should probably keep them to yourself.

If you have legitimate reasons why you doubt AGW science–or some aspect of if since there is so much– you have only to submit your hypothesis, methods, data and conclusions to a peer reviewed publication to receive a fair review.

BajaDreamer

And that makes you an intellectual coward along with already being a pompous elitist, as I already suspected.
The problem with your “hypothysis” concerning my opinion AND yours is that your’s in large part completely ignores or at the very least discounts what are already known and accepted scientific facts.
My, how convenient for you.
The actual FACT is that you don’t have anything more than I do to base your conclusions on and you have not done anything at all as you just suggested I should do, now have you professor?

Will Watson

Look, Short Stuff, I’ve been listening to your opinions on here for two weeks, and I’ve yet to see anything that warrants serious consideration.

The “known and accepted scientific facts” are other that what you’ve been saying on they are.

These are the facts I know and upon which I base my statements. I don’t need to defend these because I’m merely reiterating the consensus. You’re the one who needs to defend your views. And to do that, you’ll need to seek peer review.

BajaDreamer

Your pomposity knows no bounds. The one who is merely “parroting” here has been you all along professor. What are you afraid of that you so desperately decline to see anything offered in refutation?

The facts I’d offer you, if you asked politely, are “peer reviewed” and I can provide you with the source material as well. I’m sure a man of your education, (Your PhD was in what again? English was it?), is quite capable of handling the big words in the abstracts.

In the meantime, here is a little something that refutes a couple of the more outlandish claims your side made concerning a specific region’s glaciers, and the occurrence of severe storms.
Try not to choke on it cupcake.

EXCERPT: “From the aforementioned discussion and the results of
the present study it can be inferred that the number and
rate of glacier retreat have come down in the last decade
compared to the results of other studies carried out for a
period prior to 2001.

The results of the present study indicate that most of
the glaciers were in a steady state compared to the results
of other studies carried out for the period prior to 2001.
This period of monitoring almost corresponds to hiatus in
global warming in the last decade. It may happen that
an interval of one decade could be smaller than the
response time of glaciers to be reflected in terms of any
significant change with 23.5 m spatial resolution of data.
This point requires further studies using high-resolution
data for a longer interval of time.
————————————————-

“Studies using high-resolution data for a longer interval of time.”? Gee professor, I though you and the rest of your consensus had been telling us all that “the science was settled”?

But this one is almost hilarious! Your side has been squawking loud and long about all the severe weather we’d all have due to Global Anthropogenic Climate Warming Change. Unfortunately that not only hasn’t happened at all, it seems that they same side is now saying that the reverse is true! Once again the science is most certainly NOT settled at all!

EXCERPT (Abstract): “Incoming and outgoing solar radiation couple with heat exchange at Earth’s surface to drive weather patterns that redistribute heat and moisture around the globe, creating an atmospheric heat engine. Here, we investigate the engine’s work output using thermodynamic diagrams computed from reanalyzed observations and from a climate model simulation with anthropogenic forcing. We show that the work output is always less than that of an equivalent Carnot cycle and that it is constrained by the power necessary to maintain the hydrological cycle. In the climate simulation, the hydrological cycle increases more rapidly than the equivalent Carnot cycle. We conclude that the intensification of the hydrological cycle in warmer climates might limit the heat engine’s ability to generate work.”
——————————————–

In other words, more heat generates more water vapor. (As any decent junior high school physics class can tell you, water is a very poor conductor of heat.) This actually works against weather being more severe as things warm up, if they do at all.

Another comment on the above mentioned “peer reviewed paper” said………..

>>”The paper adds to many others demonstrating that a warmer climate is a more benign climate with fewer extreme weather events, opposite the claims of climate alarmists. Claims of global warming producing more extreme weather due to “more energy in the system” are refuted by the paper which finds the atmosphere will become “less energetic” and the atmospheric “Carnot engine” will become less efficient at performing Work (such as generating intense winds and storms) due to global warming and a decrease of temperature differentials.”<<
——————————————-

I guess the science ain't settled on that count neither, eh teach?

Will Watson

The science is settled, you dolt, in the sense that it clear that man-made CO2 is warming the planet at an alarming rate. The question of impacts is not. Many impacts are already visible, but the climate system is chaotic and it is not entirely certain what all they will be.

You;re changing the subject. I can read abstracts and conclusions both. The study to which you linked was some sort of study about the Himalayan ice mass, which is sort of a sideshow to the larger question.

BajaDreamer

My my professor, you really have your panties in a wad now don’tcha?

And no professor, I only posted about two of them, (There are LOTS more!), and both were from your side, one quite recently. They both clearly show that the science is in fact NOT settled at all……….whether you like it or not.

If I “had no idea of how solid the science is”, I wouldn’t bother arguing with you. It isn’t nearly so solid as you think it is. On the other hand, if you were as certain of it as you claim to be, you wouldn’t protest as much as you do, or be scared to even look at what someone else might present by way of refutation cupcake.

Will Watson

I did look at those studies. They are typical of peer reviewed studies of AGW impacts. Climate systems are chaotic, but AGW theory is solid. Period.

There’s nothing to report there.

You couldn’t even understand what the second study was saying–about physical limits to water vapor’s impact on weather–because you don’t understand the difference between weather and climate and thought they were talking about something else else altogether: warming.

BajaDreamer

Now you’ve gotten your panties wound up so tight that you can’t even write well. I presume you were trying to type “wet heat”, not “weat her” as you did before your edit.

I understand the effect’s of water vapor quite well professor. I also understand the difference between “climate” and “weather”. What that report was saying is that despite your side’s having said all along that continued or resuming warming would cause more numerous and more severe storms, they have been wrong. The report basically said that warming would create more water vapor which would dampen the weather effects that were predicted by your side, plain and simple. It was also said in the accompanying commentary that “a warmer climate is a more benign climate with fewer extreme weather events,…..) Again, plain and simple professor. You just don’t happen to like it is all.

The only “period” here at all is that you seem to be on yours cupcake.

Will Watson

NASA said that there was a 48% chance that 2014 was the warmest year,
but only an 18% chance that 2010 was, and only a 13% chance that 2005
was, and only a 5% chance that the fabulous 1998 was. That last one is
important because that’s the year that you deniers always seize on as
the beginning of the fabled “hiatus”.

NOAA was a little less certain, but their figures are similar: 38% probability for 2014; 23%
for 2010; 17% for 2005 and only 4% for the fabled 1998.

In other words, there’s nothing for NOAA and NASA retract, it’s just that this Climate Depot article is a fat, stupid, freaking lie.

So basically… the claim in the title isn’t supported by an actual statement from either organization; just the blog poster’s analysis and some rhetoric.

Peter

I would just like to know why the oceans are acidifying when according to scientists the oceans are warming which means not as much Co2 can be held in solution which should make the ocean more alkaline??

Frankly, this article is written by someone who doesn’t understand probability. What NASA, NOAA, JMA and the Hadley Center are saying is that 2014 had the highest probability of being the warmest year on record, compared to the other years. Every other year had a lower probability. The statistical difference is small and James Hansen et al. look at the GISS temperature data and say that there is a statistical tie between 2014, 2010 and 2005 (http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2015/20150116_Temperature2014.pdf). However, Gavin Schmidt is not being dishonest about the numbers that GISS calculated. 2014 did have the highest probability and the mean surface temperature anomaly (compared to 1951-1980 average) for these years was:
2014: +0.675
2010: +0.661
2005: +0.651
2007: +0.619
1998: +0.607

Frankly, whether 2005, 2010 or 2014 was the warmest year doesn’t make a whole lot of difference in the overall scheme of things since the important thing is the overall trend in the temperature, which is clear. Another thing to keep in mind is that we are arguing about the mean surface temperature, but the atmosphere absorbs 2%-3% of all the heat on the planet, whereas the ocean absorbs 93% and the cryosphere absorbs most of the rest. The Argo floats in the ocean show warming. The ice melting in the Arctic, Antarctic, Greenland and the mountain glaciers shows warming. The mean surface temperature shows warming. In other words, Marc Morano is making a mountain out of a mole hill and then using it to accuse climate scientists of being manipulative and dishonest. In reality the person who is being manipulative is Morano by trying to make people believe that global warming is not occurring and trying to ruin the professional reputations of the scientists at NASA and NOAA.

Robert

Thank you for a well written response. That you didn’t need invective, insults, obfuscation and we’re able to source the science says much about what ‘skeptics’ have on offer.

This post should be reprinted on the various ‘skeptic’ websites as an example of how to write a well reasoned evidence-based response.

Will Watson

It’s good, but too long for this format. Do you really expect to convince deniers that they are wrong simply by reasonable discourse? This is not a rhetorical question. I pretty much don’t, pretty much.

Robert

“.. convince deniers that they are wrong simply by reasonable discourse.”

True, though leaving well formed (and informed) comments helps set the tenor of the dialogue.

I’m slowly phasing out arguing the science and moving into reading and writing about what adaptation / mitigation measures we should be moving toward. Our govt reps are slowly seeing the writing on the wall; the environmental NGOs have done a good job getting that information to them. The ‘skeptics’ have pretty much run the course and their blather is just noise in the system.

Will Watson

The Senate vote agreeing that CC is real opens the way for mitigation negotiations: you’re right that there’s a lot of room for those. We need infrastructure retrofits anyhow.

I don’t really blog on this issue to try to convince deniers they’re wrong. At this point, deniers are so out of some deep seated emotional need that reasoned discourse cannot touch. Denial is just a co-morbidity of civilization.

The real reason I blog on here is to show deniers that they’re not safe, not even on this site, which is set up mutual masturbation by people who hate the thought that civilization and progress are not, neither one of them.

Robert

Agreed.

You may like this article:Rules for Contrarians: 1. Don’t whine. That is all

Right. But you just state over and over the same old junk that has been thoroughly debunked. I think we’re perfectly safe on this site, especially from misinformed liberal beta males who think it’s fine to trivialize the slaughter of innocents in WWII.

Will Watson

What I’m really insinuating is that climate change denial–especially since it’s embraced by much of the American national leadership–is going to spawn violence.

That is, that people fed up with trying to politely “persuade” deniers are going to start killing them. I actually know of people like this. I have a difficult time persuading my self that they’re exactly wrong.

Speichera

I think another thing that has set you warmists back is your use–beginning around 2007–of the term “denier” to describe people who disagree with you. You’re trying to imply that there’s some sort of equivalency between Holocaust denial and disagreement with your beliefs about global warming. Trivializing the Holocaust in that way is not helpful and makes you look like an idiot.

Will Watson

You’re reaching . . . nobody is “trivializing the Holocaust” when we point out the intractable quality of most AGW denial. That’s ridiculous.

The idiots here are the ones who deny the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change.

Salvador_H

No, the idiots here are those who believe the “97% agreement” BS. Oh, and science is not done by “consensus”.
AGW has strangely morphed into “Man Made Climate Change” and now is slowly turning into “Climate Disruption” – could you explain that?

Chris

You are right that 2014 has the highest probability of the years proposed, but the writer is also right that there is a 52% that 2014 is NOT the hottest, because if ANY of the others (a 52% probability) are hotter, 2014 is NOT THE HOTTEST.

Will Watson

You’re missing that the next four warmest years exhibit much higher rates of probability that they are cooler than 2014.

Denis Ables

That may be true, but the big point against perspective… after all, you alarmists want 2014 to be hottest so badly, and is is unlikely that is the case.

Will Watson

But there’s a much higher likelihood it was that for any other year. Will you at least admit that?

Denis Ables

? Not sure what you’re trying to say. Did you mean “there’s a much higher likelihood that it is than ONE other year”, but that tells you nothing about its actual status for 2014, which is… it is unlike 2014 was the hottest.

As I’ve written before, it’s all meaningless when the comparison is about the noise. Of course, there is a real question about the earth temperature data. Look at what’s been going on in Ohio and in South America. This nonsense HAS to STOP.

Quibble much? The NASA/NOAA figures show that 2014 was probably hotter than any other year, that other years have nowhere near as high a probability of being the warmest.. 2014 was as hot or hotter than any other year on record.

There’s always “noise”; but it sorts out over longer time periods. IT doesn’t negate the value of GMT measurement. It’s no coincidence that the years since 1999 are at the top of the GMT record: that’s what a smoothed trend looks like.

There will always be questions about the recording apparatus; but there are almost none about AGW theory: that’s what a theory is. And there are lots of other visible impacts of warming anyhow. Most of it is happening in the oceans usually.

Denis Ables

What you are refusing to accept is that if NOAA / NASA used satellite data then 2014 was NOT the hottest, and satellite data covers the entire earth, not less than 30% of the earth. We have had no additional warming for 18+ years. I know it’s hard for you to accept (as can be seen from your insistence on DENYing that 2014 is NOT LIKELY the hottest, even by NASA /NOAA probabilities.

In other words, satellites add enough complexity to measuring GMT that they cannot reliably be used in lieu of surface stations and the Globla Drifter System oceanic buoys. Especially when you remove the cooling bias, tropospheric temps agree well with the surface temps everywhere but at the equator, anyhow.

Plus there was a pretty infamous chapter in denialist history when Christy and Spenser, at UAH, kept claiming that the satellite record showed tropospheric cooling, even after the article in which they claimed this was retracted by its publisher–this is all off the top of my head, maybe 8-9 years ago?

Other researchers showed that the cooler temps were the result of a failure to correct for orbital decay; but Chirsty and Spenser kept right on writing op-eds and delivering public addresses that claimed aGW was greatly overestimated. There are two satellite data sets, UAH and RSS, and they don’t often agree: UAH always shows cooler. Nobody is really sure why.

Denis Ables

Satellite data also agrees quite well with weather balloons, which casts doubt on the many of the claims above. Thousands of weather balloon measurements have also shown no troposphere warming (if not cooling), which blows the very AGW hypothesis out of the water. Then there is the calibration (? which I think is ongoing).

And when you talk about people with agendas…. please don’t exclude alarmists who even now continue to DENY that there has been no additional warming for almost two decades! How anyone can base their claims on miniscule differences in temperature and claim to be objective is beyond me.
While I enjoy tweaking the rabid believers with NASA & NOAA new “probability” conclusion, that is also nonsense. That too sounds bogus.

Even when the UAH and RSS data are lumped together as an average, the result shows no warming for quite a long time.

And I didn’t notice any comment at all regarding Ohio and South America thermometer data. How much of the other land-based data is bogus?

Will Watson

New ” ‘probabilty’ conclusion”? Calculations of probability are always part of science. Such calculations were part of the original NASA/NOAA press conference. New?

The probabilities are spelled out on slide #5 of the NASA/NOAA powerpoint that was shown to the media. The only “tweaking” of the message here is by Marc Morano, who decided to emphasize one part of the NASA/NOAA data as a way of tricking the unwary.

And . . . the global surface recording apparatus is continually being refined and corrected; that’s how we know that sometimes, some stations are are in need of correction and adjustment. That’s what science is, in part; the attempt to refine error out of measurements.

How does glaciation begin and end, oh mighty being of knowledge? You know, right off the top of your head, right?

Denis Ables

“New” “? Sorry, don’t know what you’re talking about, obviously more obfuscation. There is indeed nothing new about the probability interpretation that 2014 is not likely the hottest. However, I wouldn’t put any more credence in the actual probabilities assigned by NASA and NOAA then in their original claim that 2014 was the hottest. These two agencies can’t even agree if the probability of 2014 being the highest is 38% or 48%!

As for you: You have not been able to provide any evidence that co2 has EVER had an impact on the global temperature, neither over geologic periods nor over the past few centuries. Rather than just shrug and say you are a believer (only honest answer) you instead want to quiz me about “glaciation” ? LOL

As for the argument about the supposed accuracy of satellite data, a longterm decay in satellite orbit will hardly have any influence on temperature measurements, particularly with ongoing calibration. What nerve, considering that surface thermometer results represent about 20% of the earth’s surface, and most of those are in UHIs which invariably tend to be several degrees warmer than the surrounding rural area, and so the raw data must be “adjusted”. How about dealing with the following “adjustments” with raw data, covering Ohio and South America data? (just more stuff for you to DENY ?)

How does glaciation start and end? You know, if I believed that the global temperature recording apparatus was a flawed as you say it is, I’d be skeptical too. Bit for it to be like that would require an enormous, ongoing coverup by thousands of scientists and dozens of agencies.

Denis Ables

It just takes lots of folks like you – who are in denial. That data can easily be checked, but it doesn’t fit your beliefs, so you don’t just ignore it, instead arguing that it can’t be right. All that is actually necessary is to obtain the official data set used in calculating the global temperature and compare that to the original Ohio and South America data.

What’s ironic is that you’re willing to devote time instead to all sorts of bogus theories about the state of a skeptic’s mind, a sad state of affairs indeed.

Surely the website SkepticalScience (definitely not skeptical) should be very interested in rendering the actual skeptic website which is making that claim. (Either is has, and the data checks out, so then it will likely go quiet rather than admit that there are machinations with the raw data.)

Think about what two separate supposedly unbiased science agencies have just done. Not only did they initially declare that 2014 was hottest. They offered not one caveat. (1 – using surface thermometers, 2-miniscule differences in temperatures between candidate years, so small that meaningless, 3-satellite information conflicts with that claim.

I cannot imagine any group of credible scientists permitting that to happen. And then, instead of clarifying the earlier declaration, they instead circled the wagons and went through some bogus calculations, assigning probabilities to each of the candidate years which ended up with a different conclusion.

Will Watson

So you really do think that almost every scientific institution, academy and professional body, all those banks, insurance companies, the Pentagon, the American Petroleum Institute and everyone else is being conned, and that the actual facts are so clearly different from what NASA, NOAA, the JMA, the Hadley CRU and other s are claiming that anyone should be able to just check the data and see what a fraud AGW is?

Is that a fair appraisal of your position?

Denis Ables

Sounds like “Have you stopped beating your wife – Yes or No ?

Every scientific institution is represented to the public by its management, which may have little to do with its members beliefs. (I recall one Physics Association nobel prize recipient resigning because of its position.) Most institution members, apart from those aspiring to higher office within the entity, care little about what their institution says or does. The institutions are not likely to take on the federal government. Some institutions are actually feeding at that trough. Their politically oriented management is never going to be very interested in taking on the feds.

Yyou have just seen two government “science” agencies claim that 2014 was the hottest, when any informed citizen knows that (1) the difference in comparison of annual global temperature across recent years is miniscule, so meaningless, (2) “2014 hottest” claim did not include ANY caveats, such as the fact that, using the same comparison, satellite data shows 2014 is NOT the hottest. Neither agency
has a satisfactory explanation for why they use land-based stations which represent less than 30% of the earth’s surface (actually about 20% because uninhabited large regions also include no temperature stations.) And then there is the fact that most temp stations are located within UHIs which bias temperature upwards by several degrees, so raw data must be “revised”. These science organizations received so much heat for their original bogus claim that they both adapted a compromise by assigning probabilities in such a way as to attempt to satisfy both groups. The only meaningful conclusion is that, now, according to both agencies, 2014 is not likely the hottest. But, alarmists can satisfy themselves by insisting that 2014 is still hotter than any other year. A wonderful example of politics at work. Science? Not so much. Meanwhile satellite data includes very accurate calibration techniques, covers most of the earth, and its measurements agree quite well with weather balloon data. Satellites also pick up the troposphere temperature which is extremely important to the AGW hypothesis.

But is doesn’t end there. The computer models associated with various government agencies, including universities and the IPCC, all
project temperatures which have consistently turned out to be too high, even after several revisions. None of the modelers can explain why there has been almost two decades of no additional warming even as co2 level is at its highest level in many centuries. Furthermore, a critical condition for the validity of the AGW hypothesis is that the troposphere MUST be warmer than the earth surface. Both satellite and thousands of weather balloon data show this has NOT been the case. This failing may be due, at least in part, to the assumption by computer modelers that they assigned most of the temperature increase not to increasing co2 level but to feedback by water vapor. The assumption that water vapor provides a positive feedback 2 to 3 times higher than the supposed temperature increase brought on by increasing co2 level is purely speculation. Nobody understands climate feedbacks, but it’s likely that cloud cover, one aspect of water vapor, provides a negative feedback.

The “follow the money” claim invariably leads to our government, not to the oil industry. No other entity can begin to compete with the “climate” dollars expended by our government. Grants are generously provided to those scientists or firms (Solynra, et al) which perform accordingly. The IPCC is strictly a political organization, (as is our government, particularly our current administration) and will employ dubious science whenever that is deemed necessary. The “belief” in anthropogenic warming fits well with various agendas, funds provided for cooperation, fodder for various liberal positions.

Alarmists are pushing for immediate action. Why? They can’t even show evidence for their claim? Besides, the costs of implementing any potential solution would be prohibitive, and, in any case, would have minimum impact. The global temperature has not increased during the past 18 years. Before that it was rising much slower than projected by the computer models. Even the author(s) of those models generally admit their models are merely “projections”, not “predictions”. The Antarctic sea ice extent is breaking records every day. The Arctic sea ice extent has begun increasing significantly in the past couple of years. Sea level increase is low (1 or 2 mm per YEAR) and is decelerating (to the extent such small changes can be determined at all!) The frequency and severity of weather events has dropped in the past few decades.

Skeptics have grandkids too, and have no interest in destroying the earth. But skeptics are flexible. If evidence to the contrary ever does show up, they’re willing to change their position We seem to have plenty of time. . The current crop of alarmists, on the other hand, have dug themselves into such a deep hole that they now have no alternative but to go down, with all flags flying.

This, I think, is a fair appraisal of my position.

Will Watson

You protest too much. For what you believe to be true, almost the entire scientific establishment–everything from peer review, to research protocols, to the editors of top flight journals, to the leadership of ALL the institutions and academies–would have to be one big conspiracy to conceal the facts.

That’s nuts. Although I will give you credit for creativity. Your vision of the reality of AGW is pure fiction. I am amazed at how much you get wrong.

You should write a novel, like Michael Crichton’s “Climate of Fear.” That way your grandkids could look back and see that they descended from a high profile climate criminal.

Denis Ables

How about elaborating on what I’ve got wrong? Right now, warminstas have just come up with yet another excuse for why the temperature has not been rising. This time they’re claiming that it’s just luck – in other words, they are now admitting that there are chaotic features related to climate change and obviously there’s not much we can do about that. Do you suppose all those folks think I’m lying when I say there’s been no warming, but at the same time, have come up with numerous excuses about why that is not happening? These are your “scientists”. You’re obviously not paying attention to your own cabal.

Will Watson

I’ve been elaborating on what you got wrong for two weeks. NASA/NOAA in no way backed off their conclusion that 2014 was the warmest year. That’s Marc Morano’s distortion of the question probability They’re not 100% sure–even gravity is not 100% certain–although they are considerably more sure that 2014 was the warmest year than they are about any other year. But if they wanted to mislead the public, why wouldn’t they have just neglected to announce the probabilities?

And how the temperature has “not been rising” is a little difficult for me to see, given that the three warmest years on record–2014, 2010 and 2005–have all been in the last ten years and that the decade 2000-2009 was warmer than the two before it, which were in turn warmer than any others before them. The last 359 months have all been above the 20th-century average. The margin of error is the same for every annual GMT . . . etc, ad infinitum, ad nauseum: you’re not operating in the same physical universe if you claim otherwise.

Climate may be chaotic, but there’s no controversy about the effect of greenhouse gasses on IR light. That’s a physical law, maybe even more certain than gravity since it’s so easy to demonstrate. Where the heat goes from the solar imbalance may not be as clear cut as you–or the people who study it–might like–but there’s no doubt that a significant amount of IR light/heat energy is remaining in the atmosphere. The satellites show as much, and have for decades.

Denis Ables

That’s your DENIAL (? or misunderstanding) of what both NASA and NOAA have unambiguously declared. While it has assigned probabilities to the candidate warm states which make 2014 likely warmer than any one other candidate, 2014 is not likely the warmest. You show your ignorance on this one. Worse, you amplify that issue by also not understanding why it is that recent years can be the warmest, and yet there’s been no additional warming !

“IR Light” ? Another interesting term. Also the term “physical law” includes much more than you indicate, namely that greenhouses do not permit convection across their hard (by definition) boundaries, and this does not hold in the open atmosphere because we know heat is escaping to space. There’s another ‘physical law” which is that co2 ability to impact the temperature diminishes as its level increases.

You definitely qualify as one of the “useful idiots” in terms of your support of the anthropogenic global warming.

Will Watson

Yes, you freaking idiot: IR Light. Infrared light, the long wave, low frequency light that reflects back from the planet, and about half of it is reflected back at the planet by greenhouse gasses, notably CO2.

You don’t even understand the mechanism of the greenhouse effect, do you? That is almost unbelievable. Hey, Dense-is, what gives the initial impetus to deglaciation? How does that work?

Denis Ables

IR is sufficient. No need to append “light” “Light” is generally reserved for the frequency range picked up by the human eye.

You’re quick to make ridiculous claims about what I do or don’t understand, and lordy here you come with “deglaciation” again.

If you can’t understand that the miniscule differences in annual temperature imply no additional warming, let alone the claim by NOAA and NASA that 2014 is not likely the warmest, year I don’t think you’re equipped to recognize the intelligence of anything but perhaps that associated with a potted plant.

Will Watson

As I said, I’ve been elaborating on what you’ve gotten wrong for two weeks. Nothing has changed. I tell you what, look up the answer to the question of how interglacials start. At least that way, you will have learned something from this.

Denis Ables

Really? How about mentioning one or two of those things you’ve been elaborating on, in response to this request. (I asked before and all I got was a repeat of the same bogus claim with no other content. Shouldn’t be difficult to quote or cite your own stuff.

Will Watson

1.)Probability and the NASA/NOAA announcement of their conclusion that 2014 in the hottest year on the record;

2.)the fact that there has been no real retraction of that claim, despite Morano’s lying that there was; the probabilities and GMT margins were part of the original announcment

3.) the origins of AGW theory in the discovery of the impact of CO2 on IR light; this is now accepted as physical law and is the foundation of our understanding of how climate works and worked in deep past.

4.) The evidence of CO2’s impact on GMT found in the ice core records and other proxies.

5.) Satellite records, and why they’re not any less fallible than surface or ocean buoy records.

6.) Feedbacks and how CO2 both lags and leads GMT in the ice core records.

7.) the fact that you have no idea how ice ages begin and end; although this means that your grasp of climate dynamics is limited, at best. Likewise, your grasp of the mechanics of the greenhouse effect (no one is claiming that the atmosphere works exactly as a greenhouse works–the term is a metaphor)

8.) The fact that every major institution in the world–scientific, governmental, military–like the Pentagon–industrial, banks and insurance companies–accepts that AGW is real.

9.) The limited credibility of climate denialist sources–like WattsUp and Climate Depot–especially when compared to the consensus of the vast majority of actual climate scientists publishing in top flight peer reviewed journals.

10.) Questions of noise, long term trends, margins of error (which are the same for the whole GMT record).

Denis Ables

1) You don’t understand basic probability. Both NOAA and NASA assigned separate probabilities to all recent candidate-for-hottest-2014 years. The probability for each year was less than 50%. This
implies (as has been obvious from the get-go) that it is unlikely that ANY one year was the hottest. (That includes 2014.)

2) The retraction was implicit in the NASA and NOAA revision. Nothing more need be said (and, of course, neither agency was anxious to give their new position any extra attention.

3) “origins of AGW theory.. now accepted as physical law… “ Not a valid argument when it is authority which is in question. Such a claim, in this debate, is no different than alarmists repeating “yes” and skeptics repeating “no”. Not constructive, and no closer to resolving the problem. Also, the actual claims of “consensus” by two “studies” has been totally debunked.

4) The only evidence of the relationship between co2 level and temperature shows that temperature variations occur FIRST and very similar variations in the level of co2 appear hundreds of years LATER. It’s the carbon cycle.

5) “satellite records and why they’re not any less fallible than surface or ocean buoy records.” What are you trying to say?

6) “Feedbacks and how co2 both leads and lags GMT in the ice core records.” Sorry, the correlation is clear. It’s obvious that alarmists are now attempting to hide behind obfuscation, offering nothing that makes sense.

7) “the fact that you have no idea how ice ages begin and end…” Based on no
facts, and, in any event, no different than you being able to offer any evidence of co2 EVER having any impact on the earth’s temperature. (However, a similar conclusion certainly could be deduced from your misunderstandings of a very simple proposition by NOAA and NASA regarding the unlikelihood of 2014 being the hottest.)

8) You’re once again arguing from authority. Not meaningful and a repetition of a similar argument earlier.

9) “limited credibility of climate denialist sources” ? The evidence conflicts, because it is known as the most popular science website. (There is likely a 100% correlation that those critizing WUWT are also fans of the bogus SkeptcalScience website and belong to the warminista cult.)

10)Questions of noise,margins of errors. Your statement for this item is indeed “noise”

Will Watson

As I said, I’ve been elaborating on why you’re dead wrong about all those things for two weeks. I’m disinclined to continue. You win. Ring the bell. I refuse to argue with a stupid person anymore; you’ve dragged me down to your level and beaten me with experience.

Denis Ables

What? Now that I’ve given you a link to Monckton’s latest computation (18 years, 3 months with no additional warming).
Perhaps just because the same type analysis shows no statistically significant warming for 26 years ? Or perhaps you’ve finally been exposed (at least at the WUWT site) how a real science website treats the issue?

Yes, it is much like the wide array of acceptance for the WMD in Iraq. If we wait, and grind fine, we eventually get the truth out.

Will Watson

“If we wait”, uncontrollable feedbacks will disrupt the climate so badly the planet will be largely unlivable within the lifetimes of living generations.

Leonard Schopenhouer

You allege, but there is no evidence to support your contention that within 50-70 years the entire planet will become unlivable. Public schools I suspect is the root cause of your misunderstanding. See today’s Max Planck institute declarations that ALL of the IPCC models in use are unfit for predictive use, given the breakdown of ALL confidence bounds.

Denis Ables

Well, if you think the noise “sorts out” over time, what about the satellite data noise? Neither satellite ranks 2014 as the hottest.

No conflicting information about AGW theory? For starters, there is the temperature of the troposphere (now supposedly rehidden in the deepest ocean). Several earlier warmings during this interglacial – all warmer than now. Not even a correlation over eons between co2 level and the earth’s global temperature. NO recognition that, in a greenhouse there is no convection across it’s firm boundaries, together with satellite measurements of heat escaping to space. And, then there is the practical aspects of AGW “theory”, in particular machinations with the surface data, including the fact that most of the surface temperature stations are in UHIs. Each of these temperatures must be radically revised and you claiming that is more accurate than highly calibrated satellite data? Please.

“It’s no coincidence that the years since 1999 are at the top of the GMT..”
We are in a warm period, but there’s been no additional warming since the late 1990s. Why wouldn’t you expect most of the (relatively) warmest years to be in this period?

Of course, even the IPCC recognizes that this “record” only goes back about 800 years (at least until the next time they revise their historic position, which – for all I know – may have been just a few minutes ago. This is an admission that the MWP was warmer. In any event there are numerous confirming peer-reviewed studies by 40+ countries, performed around the globe, all available via co2science.org. The planet has been warmer with co2 at 280ppmv (since most alarmists claim that temp to have been a low over million years.

Denis Ables

Those differences are trivial, particularly in light of where NASA and NOAA temperature data comes from. The whole exercise was meaningless, but the alarmists are now DENYing that “statistical significance is a valid concept, anything to keep their claims alive. You have interpreted the probability of 2014 in comparison to any one other year. That’s fine, you made it clear, but the most meaningful comparison is to all others years, in which case 2014 is NOT likely the hottest.

Salvador_H

How can you compare a ONE YEAR temperature with a 30 year average? Do you really believe that temperature varied by only +/- 0.02 Degrees? Really?

Tom Bates

You and your fellow believers have no concept of probability at all. If something is less than 50 percent probability than something else is more likely to be true. If they calculate it at 48 or 38 percent, some over year is more likely to be the warmest. That is how probability works. You do not line up the years and decide some year at 48 percent is more likely than 10 percent, the first is more likely to have another year as warmest as is the second, it does not tell you which year is which.

Tom Bates

You point to Giss as the gold standard. Giss is not the actual temperature, 66 percent of the data is an estimate. If the actual temperature for the giss grid section is unknown they throw in a temperature from surrounding grids averages up to thousands of miles away. If an actual temperature is lower than surrounding grids they throw it out and plug with that average of higher temperatures. For example, Barrow Alaska was raised 1.5 degrees from actual as was Pensacola Florida which was raised 1 degree. Thousands of other station measurements were likewise changed, thousands of other stations were simply not counted like Orland Ca. which has been in continuous use since 1885 and sits in a field, not near a building or other high heat source. Giss has been using fewer and fewer stations over the years while using more and more plugs. For ocean temperatures there are far fewer measurements. they have been using argo floats and ship temperatures. When the argo temperature were shown to be less than the ship temperature they adjusted the argo temperature upwards. A lot of the argo temperature floats had many problems and through the years they have made many plug adjustments to the reported measurements. How accurate all the adjustment is is unknown.

The Method to Our 1-in-27 Million Madness, or What Real Statistical Analysis of the GMT Record Reveals

By now, you’ve probably heard that 2014 was the warmest year on record. You may have also heard that 13 of the 15 hottest years occurred in the past 15 years, which left to chance, is the longest of long shots. How long? Like 1-in-27 million. We calculated those odds — and illustrated them with a nifty animation — and a lot of folks were interested in how we arrived at that number.

Here’s how we set out to calculate the probability that 13 of the 15 hottest years would occur in the past 15 years without the influence of climate change. It’s a little geeky but bear with us. Our statistical approach was to consider all the possible combinations you can get by reordering the 135-year climate record, and then calculate how many of those combinations have 13 of the hottest 15 within a 15-year period.

Under naive assumptions of independence, one could randomly reorder the 135-year global temperature record as single years to represent the absence of a long-term climate trend. In that case, there are 105 ways to choose 13 of the hottest 15 years and 7,140 ways to choose two more years from the remaining 120. That gives you 749,700 ways of choosing 15
years from the 135-year record that contain exactly 13 of the hottest 15 years. That seems like a lot. But of all the ways to randomly choose 15 years from 135 (3.075637e+19 or approximately 31,000,000,000,000,000,000), that’s only 1 in 4.102491e+13 or
approximately 1 in 41,000,000,000,000 or 1-in-41 trillion.

A less naive approach would allow for short-term climatic variability, which may extend beyond a single year (but doesn’t represent a long-term climate change trend). To capture we randomly reordered the period of record using 2-year blocks. By randomly choosing
a start year for the block assignments, there are two sets of year pairings. The top 15 are found in the last 20 years of the series. Looking at those 10 pairs, the two possibilities are set1 = {2, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 2, 0, 2, 0} and set2 = {1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1}. There are 472 ways to choose an appropriate subset from set1 and only 10 ways to choose them from set2. With equal chances of which set is chosen, the average is 241 ways to choose 8 two-year blocks that contain at least 13 of the hottest 15 years. There are 6,522,361,560 ways to choose 8
blocks from 67 (you can fit 67 2-year blocks into a 135-year period of record). So a conservative estimate of this probability is 1 in 27,063,741 or about 1-in-27 million.

Not necessarily a “different year”. It could be that every year but 2014 was the hottest, for example.

Jeff Dozier

Pretty clear from the probability tables that 2005-2015 is the hottest decade on record.

Duke Silver

Let’s not forget the (less than a coin toss) likelihood was entirely predicated upon a GHCN database which required significant, non-random, slope-changing “adjustment” in order to play ball at all.

If there is a just God in heaven – please let this charade hinge upon the veracity of the data….. as all scientific theories do.

joe

Reading comments here embarrasses me to be a scientist. Science has become so corrupt due to government money that it’s not reaching to say that you’re mostly all like politicians. Find some other source of your income besides intentionally lying to the public just to get more money. Alarmists are fake scientists. In case you all haven’t noticed, look up and you’ll find the source of your beloved climate change. It’s man made alright. By jet aircraft spraying aerosols non-stop. If you can’t convince people of a crisis then create it. You can say what you want about what I’ve said but my eyes don’t deceive me. I’ve been on this planet a long time and I know what normal skies look like and it is not what it looks like now, especially over the past 3 years. If you can’t see that then YOU are the denier. Feel free to shill away. By the way, I do hard science, not simulations that use incomplete models INTENTIONALLY. You cannot simulate the global climate even out for a day much less 10 to 100 years. Only the ignorant public would buy into your useless simulations. Call me when you can get the weather predicted out to 2 days. Hint: figure the aerosols in if you can. Maybe those behind it will provide you with their schedules.

There is a lot of money at stake at both sides of the global warming debate. Myself, however, I have taken the consequence of the last decades’ cooling in the country I lived in until recently, Norway, and by now I mostly live in the Caribian area.